hi there this is Jim from Trek world and today we’re going to take an in-depth look at what may very well be the most iconic miniature ever built the 11 foot 2 inch long USS Enterprise model from the classic TV series Star Trek beginning with the earliest design sketches of the Enterprise we’ll get a glimpse into the creative processes and the vision of The Talented artists and designers who brought this Starship to life then we’ll follow the Journey of the Enterprise model as it is delivered to the Star Trek television series and witness its Evolution through the various modifications made during the show’s run finally we’ll take you back to 1972 when the model made a special appearance at an exhibition at a Huntington Valley College in California captivating the hearts and the minds of trekkies and sci-fi fans alike so join us after the break as we delve into the history and Legacy of this remarkable piece of television history after watching this video please remember to check out our channel for other videos of which these are only a
selection also be sure to like this video so that YouTube will offer it more people lastly please consider becoming a VIP supporter at our patreon site using the link below in the description in early 1964 desilu Studios ordered a pilot for new science fiction television show in the very height of America’s love affair with westerns Gene rodberry’s sail pitch promised the studio that it would be a futuristic Wagon Train To the Stars now ironically it would be later understood that Lucille Ball didn’t actually understand what she had gotten the studio into when she first approved the production of the first pilot however after finding out it was a science fiction series she doubled down on her support by financing both Pilots before they got an order from NBC in order to sell it to the network for the NBC fall 1965 season desilu needed to have the pilot in the can and ready to go no later than early spring 1965. now one of the very first problems that
needed to be addressed is what does the spaceship look like Roddenberry knew one thing immediately it wasn’t going to look like any of these stereotypical spaceships featured in movies and television up to that time no Rockets no flying saucers and absolutely no flaming exhausts Now using those constraints the task fell to one Matt Jeffries to design a spaceship that would look like a true spaceship but could not look like any spaceships that had come before over the next few weeks Matt would present jeans with sketches Gene would tell him what he liked and what he didn’t like about each design little by little a composite design began to form ladies and gentlemen I present to you the worldwide debut of the Starship Enterprise now before we move on I want to take the moment to point out a few items from the signed sketch all the way back in 1964. many folks have asked about the origin of the registry numbers the lower left
hand corner tells us in Matt’s own handwriting that 17 represented a sequential number used by Starfleet for each new ship also take a look at this note that the concept of potential refits were considered all the way back in 1965 when he made his note about NCC 1701a you know at the very end of this process the elegant and unique design that would enthrall viewers for decades began to come into view these last two color drawings show the top and lateral elevations of the proposed model also note here that the name of this last drawing is SS Enterprise also of note is the notation about the paired power units an interesting anecdote of Star Trek history is that Matt never used the word nacelle for these he would refer to them as power units during the original series and then later is power pods all the way up through Star Trek the motion picture
to obtain the final sign-off from rodberry Matt created a four inch model in balsa wood and showed it to Gene now unfortunately this four inch model was lost to time as the decades passed I’ve never been able to find any specific evidence or references on what happened to the model there are lots of urban legends but nothing you can quite nail down with the new design approved the Howard Anderson company then subcontracted to Richard C Dayton the order to build two models of the Enterprise now Dayton would receive the original blue lines from Matt dated November 7th 1964. using them he would begin construction of the 33 inch reference model excuse me Jim did you mean to say blueprints were used on construction funny you should ask long time viewers of the channel will be familiar with my fascination with things my mother called useless knowledge it is my uncanny ability remember things like who was the
only US president to be single while still not being able to tell you what it was I ate for dinner last night by the way the President was James a Buchanan he was the president before Abraham Lincoln the beginnings of the mid-1970s brought us the Star Trek Starfleet technical manual and the Star Trek blueprints serving as a template that everything would similarly follow afterwards almost every blueprint you have ever seen associated with Star Trek isn’t really a blueprint in reality the drawings are what the architectural World calls blue lines the reason is because they are printed on white backgrounds whereas blueprints are printed appropriately and guess what a blue background instead we will show you an actual set of real Star Trek blueprints and a sample of one of the many blueprints from the TV show Mythbusters and now we’ll return you to your regular scheduled programming meanwhile back at the Dayton household Richard used the drawings that Matt had provided of a 33 inch model
now over the years have been many photos of drawings and blueprints published that were purported to be the final set used by Dayton for the construction Richard Dayton mentions that the one specifically in the Star Trek Sketchbook as well as the ones mentioned in inside Star Trek are not the actual set now how can you be sure of this simple he had the only set used in the construction of the models in personal possession all of these years Paul knew it was kind enough to provide this photo of Dayton and the drawings which we’re taking during a visit with Dayton in the meantime Dayton reached out and subcontracted the model production shop to build what he referred to as the four times model just two weeks after being given the drawings Dayton delivered the very first Studio model ever built of the Starship Enterprise somewhere around mid-november measuring It 33 inches it was made almost entirely from solid wood now by this point work hadn’t even begun on the larger model so Gene made the decision actually use the smaller model for filming as it was ready far earlier than
the larger model saving the larger model for a single shot he quickly gave a list of changes that he wanted made in the meantime among these Jean asked Dayton to paint windows on the surface of the models now about a month later in mid-December Dayton delivered the updated small model to Gene and these two shots were taken on the old 40 Acres lot where they were actually filming the cage in the first picture you are using examining the model while Richard Dayton holds it now never one to miss a publicity shot Gene had another photo taken with the star of the pilot Jeffrey Hunter holding the model for Roddenberry to inspect the work on the larger model begins on December 8 1964. now amazingly this is the only known photo depicting the actual construction of the model originally part of a magazine article it shows melt keys and Vernon Scion creating the plaster molds which would then be used to create the saucer section for the model on December 29 1964 about a week after all shooting had been completed the 11 foot model was delivered to the Howard a
Anderson Studio at desilu now amazingly enough the builders decided to take a few photos of the model as they offloaded it into the streets at the desilu location none of these men would ever have guessed that the photos they were taking that day would become world famous over the next 50 years please remember that this point Richard Dayton believed he had completed both models He was unaware of any changes that Gene would be asking him to do shortly as far as Dayton was concerned they were locked and loaded and he was moving on to the next thing so we begin our look at this photo from December 1964 along with the men of the production model shop who built it left to right Richard Dayton Mel Keyes Vernon Scion vomer Jensen was not in this photo but he took the picture the model itself weighed about 220 pounds and actually required right around six hundred dollars worth of materials Richard Dayton supervised the construction and did all the detail work
and subsequent alterations now before we move on here’s a slightly different shot of the same three men but in different positions notice how Dayton has his hand resting on the Enterprise now this is another picture taken that day the difference is that Richard Dayton took this picture so Vernon far right could be in the photo please take a note at that blue box that I put around the deflector dish right down there at the bottom now this is the third shot that we’re looking at of this model from what appears to be the same distance however shows there was a definite time delay between this model shot and all the others you can see the evidence of this is that the secondary Hull does not have the deflector dish attached although it was attached in every one of the other photographs now I’ve never seen anyone even notice this or comment anywhere about the missing dish but it’s my belief that they took this photo immediately after unloading the model in the street then they attached the dish and took the other photos which were much more personalized because they were in them in what has to
be one of the most ironic foreshadowing I’ve ever seen the original dish would be lost and replaced many times over the ensuing decades a final note of this particular positioning of the model they would choose this exact same angle of approach to be featured in the only shot that they would use in the first pilot this is a shot from the exact same sets of photos but showing a different angle from the bow this photo appears to be the last photo of the set that was taken that day now I have to speak about this little guy this little fellow has found its way across the internet many many times over the past 15 years or so however it’s not a real photo it is actually a Photoshop combination of two different photos as you can see here now since that day Star Trek fans are going out of their way to stand in the same spot and take various photos of the exact same location just to commemorate the fact that they were there at the place that the Enterprise was delivered at as you search through the internet looking for various versions of the delivery photos you’re going to see a lot of those other photos this photo
got my vote for most creative and finally I found what originally appeared at first blush to be just another simple black and white copy of the photos we’d already seen but that’s not entirely the case as we pull back on the photo to show more of it you’ll notice that this photo’s eye line is much higher than the eye line of the others as such you can now make out the names of the neighboring businesses most photos of this time frame were Square so it could be that the other photos were cropped when they created the original scans off the original photos now during that point the 1960s almost every photograph that you would take would come out square so my belief is this is an example of what an unretouched original photo looked like over the years they’ve been enhanced and scanned and colorized and somewhere along the way they lost their one-to-one Square size and ended up with something roughly approaching maybe 4-3 now buckle up buttercup we are coming to the point in