Who would have guessed that this ugly duckling of a starship would have garnered such die hard affection from the fans? Here she is, moments after Mike Okuda and I finished pinstriping, and graffiking her at Brazil Fabrication in the San Fernando Valley. Now go forth, and kick some rightious Borg booty!
Tony Meinenger and his gang did a magnificent job interpreting Jim Martin’s sketches of the Defiant into reality. Here is the equally magnificent DS9 VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel holding the model up for me so that I can get some good flat shots. Useful for doing systems diagrams, and especially for creating the graphics that Mike and I will apply to the finished miniature. Graphics make the starship!
The Defiant, like the Voyager, was built from vacuum formed plastic rather than fiber glass layed into a mold. This made for a lighter model that was easy to work with on the stand. It also allowed Tony’s guys more latitude when building in self lights and mounting points. I should also point out that this eliminated the use of catalyzing plastics which give off toxic fumes. Safety first!
If there is enough interest I will post more Defiant shots from the Drex Files archives. Enjoy!
Yes, please post more! Seeing what happens before we see it on the screen is fascinating.
Howdy Twickie!
More on the way, ’cause I’ve barely scratched the surface of the Drex Files archives.
- Doug
Mr. Drexler,
I doubt you remember me, but years ago I emailed you about the “kitbashed” ships in the DS9 Technical Manual, and you were nice enough to email me some photos of them. I’ll never forget your kindness and patience. I’m a great fan of your work, and I think this blog is a terrific way to share your work with all of us. Looking forward to more photos from the Drex Files!
Hi Mark! I actually do remember corresponding! It’s nice to hear from you, and I surely appreciate your generous praise. Thank you! I’ll be foraging over the next few days, and am excited about what is coming down the EPS conduit. Keep watching, and I look frward to your feedback! – Doug
Sir, I am always interested in all things DS9 and modelmaking at the levels you describe.
Moe! Always a pleasure! Pleased to see you here at the archives, and look forward to bringing you some interesting stuff! – Doug
Hi Doug,
I agree with the previous poster, we die-hard star trek starship-model freaks would love to see more pics of various starship models. CGI in all fairness, but models! Just great. Keep up the great job, and you bet we all appreciate it!
I used to run a website “The Guardian of Forever” that was devoted to showing pics of starships, starbases, probes and all other space-stuff. I still maintain my archive, but I recently became a father, so you can guess what takes up all my spare-time…
Howdy, Starship Freak! If that IS your real name! Thanks for the kind words. It is my fondest hope to thrill you with pics you have never seen, in fact, Christmas day will see some good stuff here at the Drex Files, so be sure to tune in. Congrats on fatherhood! What’s the little goobers name? Saratoga? Lexington? – Doug
Doug, you already have. This blog is gravy. Delicious, forbidden gravy.
Moe! That’s awesome! Forbidden Gravy! Mind if I adopt that phrase on the site?
This is Fantastic !!
And Moe is correct..forbidden gravy indeed !!:D
James, take a heapin’ helpin’ of our hospitality! I don’t know if you are a Buckeroo Banzai fan, but I’ll be posting illustrations I did for that never realized show. I only mentioned it because of all this talk about gravy. In the Banzai pilot, “Super-size Those Fries,” Lectroid Kingpin Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) plans to hijack the Earth by harnessing the enormous energy of the world’s potato crops. Rremember in science class when you squeezed volts from a tuber? (wow! there is just something wrong about that!). Potatos… gravy… it all ties together!
Hi Doug!
I just came across your blog and I’m kicking myself that I never found it soon. I’m a HUGE fan of the Defiant NX-74205 and would LOVE (love isn’t a strong enough word) to see more shots of her from napkin sketch all way till when some lucky SOB bought it at the Chrities auction… man, that person is lucky. Keep up the great work!
Don’t kick your self, James! The site has only been up about 9 days! Your wish is my command. More to come! – Doug
Mr. D., my words here are yours to use as you see fit. Such as they are.
Happy New Year and all the best! Thanks for the pictures with the ruler – I’ve seen conflicting reports on the length of the miniature, anywhere from three to four feet, and this should help settle it.
Now, a very important Defiant question (I already asked it on Mojo’s blog, but didn’t want to follow up to your answer since it wasn’t related to the main topic) – do you recall why the Defiant cutaway has only four decks? What this does, assuming the usual 12-foot decks and reasonable heights for the people shown inside, is make the Defiant about 360 feet long. The same length can be derived from your deck plans, which, along with the MSD, represent pretty much the main argument for the current prevailing consensus that the ship is 360 feet long.
On the other hand, Gaary Hutzel always intended a 560-foot size, from the time the ship was being designed to the very end. (I talked to him over email.) David Stipes also supported this size in his posts, and so do you, in your size comparisons with other ships in the Encyclopedia and the DS9TM. In fact, your deck plans are about 17.1cm long, and 560 feet is 171m, suggesting you drew them at a specific scale based around this 560-foot figure.
No changes were introduced for the shuttlebay episode, in response to your answer on Mojo’s blog, so I’m not sure how you came up with the smaller, 360-foot scale in the MSD and the deck plans. I get the feeling that on the one hand, you agree with the 560-foot size, but in that case, the deck plans and MSD are seriously out of scale, which is the reason most people tend to ignore this and go with the 360-foot size that fits.
It’s an important question since for a very long time, the Defiant size debate centered around this heated 360/560 argument, so it would really be interesting to know how you came up with this smaller, MSD layout.
Boris! I’ll need to come back to this in a little bit, as I am on my way to work! I don’t remember what I said on Mojo’s blog, so you can tell me that I’m stuffed with wild blueberry muffins if I contradict myself. The size of the Defiant was a hot potato from day one. Rick Berman wanted a small pocket battleship (a couple times longer than a runabout, with the girth of a regular starship), Gary wanted at least 500′. I could be crazy, but my memory is that Rick Berman then became almost entirely involved with Voyager, and Ira Behr moved up to helmsman. At that point the ship became bigger… but how much? It finally became an issue when we had to do the cutaway. So Mike Okuda asked Ira Behr, and he said he wanted four decks. Ira wanted characters able to run from one location to the next, and not rely on Turbolifts.
Gotta go! When I return, I will tell you how I rationalize it enough to come up with a 420′ Defiant with 4 decks – Doug
Mike? Are you around?
Doug:
A lot of the Defiant’s origins are probably lost in the dim mists of time, but I recall that there were quite a number of conflicting opinions as to what size the ship should be. Rick and Ira wanted the ship fairly small. I applauded their approach, because I thought a smaller ship would be quite interesting from a storytelling perspective.
But I have always been fascinated with Gary Hutzel’s thoughts on ship design. When Gary suggested a particular feature, it was always because he knew that it would somehow improve the visual effects, be it by the placement of windows to create a better impression of scale, by the use of surface detail to create a more dramatic shadow pattern, or (in the case of physical models), by adjusting the angles of the body parts to make it more practical to film using motion-control mounts. Also, Gary was always willing to experiment to develop new ideas. I always learned something, whenever we worked with him on one of these models. That was one of the joys of working with our friends from Visual Effects.
Fortunately, Defiant’s final design was fairly ambiguous in terms of scale. It had the detail and mass that Gary wanted, but there was relatively little to contradict Ira or Rick’s wishes for different sizes. In the art department, our job was frequently to please as many masters as possible. Oddly enough, this often led to a better finished product.
Defiant was such a departure from the “normal” Star Trek ships, that I did have some concerns about the design. But since Gary was spearheading the project along with our talented illustrator, Jim Martin, I also had faith that it would turn out well. (I should also mention Tony Meininger’s brilliant modelmaking, as well!) And, as evidenced by the finished shots, as well as the interest in your photos, it obviously did!
-Mike
Hello,
Thanks for both comments. The bottom line is that few effects shots unambiguously demonstrate the 560-foot size, whereas a couple of them show various smaller sizes. However, while the VFX tend to be all over the place in this regard (sometimes for specific dramatic reasons), it is very hard to argue with the basic Master Systems Display layout, which has remained pretty much the same since it was first shown at the end of season three, then validated again and again by just about every Bridge or Engineering shot. While there are a number of ways to rationalize inconsistent VFX shots, it is hard to explain why Sisko would retain out-of-scale schematics all those years
Doug: so basically, you started with a side view and the requested four decks, not with an actual specific length, and worked out the layout from there? I don’t want to go into the details of what ended up where (and there are a number of interesting questions about the layout, especially the placement of impulse engines and torpedo launchers), but since you are responsible for fleshing out a fairly large chunk of the Defiant (possibly in cooperation with other people), it would be great to see an eventual blog post on the subject of how the layout was worked out, all the way from the original MSD to the deck plans. It would cover a huge gap in our understanding of the Defiant’s evolution.
Best regards,
Boris
I should also point out that this eliminated the use of catalyzing plastics which give off toxic fumes. Safety first!
LOL, indeed though. Thanks guys for all that cool back-info, and Pics Doug. Awesome. Always like the lines of lil’ D.
PLL,
deg
Love, love, love the Defiant!! I’m glad I had a little time to look all the way back to the beginning ’cause this is a little gem worth digging up!!
I have the Assimilate This Antares Fleet Yards patch as one of my wallpapers, thanks to your later post.
Go Defiant!