When a reader told me that I had never run any views of Rick Sternbach’s masterpiece, I was certain that they were wrong. But they weren’t! Better late than never, and fresh baked this very morning, one of the earliest CG Star Trek models ever – The U.S.S Voyager... enjoy!
I was working up at Foundation Imaging when Rick Sternbach’s Delta Flyer lifeboat design came in. I was the lucky boy who got to build it. Joy!
Almost three years in the organizing, Alec Peters and his Propworx team have released the auction book for their upcoming Star Trek Prop and Costume auction.
Regular readers of the drex files know that I turned my collection, acquired after nearly two decades of working on Star Trek, over to Alec to be made available to fans of the show. That’s a lot of dumpster diving folks! The auction also includes amazing memorabilia from the collections of Mike and Denise Okuda, Rick Sternbach and Marc Zicree. As usual, the Propworx auction book is a collectors item in its own right, and is now available for free download at their site http://startrekauction.blogspot.com/. The book will also be available as an impressive high quality hard copy collectors edition. In the meantime, go to the Propworx site and download your free copy! It’s a fantastic document that all Trek fans will want to add to their archive of Star Trek data! Congrats to Alec and his team (a shout out to graphic designer Damaris Degan) for another great job!
With it’s capsule-like design ethic, Think Tank came out of left field.
The “Think Tank” was a cooperative of technologically advanced alien intellectuals who literally made it their business to solve problems of other species in the Delta Quadrant… for a price.
The Think Tank vessel is a real departure for the standard Voyager “ship of the week” aesthetic. Missing the usual sense of front, back, top, bottom, and obvious direction of flight, the Think Tank is a refreshing contrivance.
Feeling a bit like an automobile transmission in space, this design was originally used by the extremely xenophobic and reclusive Ba’neth, and ended up recycled by the Shanghai happy Quarra.
The only renders that I have of this very hardwaresy looking space station by Rick Sternbach, hasn’t any textures. But you know what? it’s rather interesting to look at anyway. So here it is… it’s naked, so be sure no children are looking at this! Be responsible!
Continue reading ‘Objects in Space 01 – Ba’neth\ Quarra Station’
Having appeared several times on Trek, and seen up close for the first time today, another pirated pirate ship.
This is the smaller pirate ship from the “Enterprise” episode “Horizon”. The ECS Horizon is attacked by two small vessels of this type. They attach a marker beacon to the hull so a larger accomplice ship (a re-use of the Akritirian patrol ship – http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/akritirian.htm) can later find and properly attack the cargo vessel. This modification appeared as the Ankari in “Equinox II”, and also appeared as a vessel participating in the Antarian Trans-stellar rally in “Drive”.
Further background :
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/yo-ho-enterprises-pirated-pirate-ship/
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/ecs-horizon/
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The Benthan patrol ship from Voyager, with it’s mecha-organic twists and turns, enlivened the general straight edge approach that the show’s ships favored.
Did you miss me? I literally went through withdrawals. The routine of posting everyday, two and three times, had become a powerful habit. Work is very busy, highly stimulating, and the gang is buzzing to be doing something other than space stuff. Last night Dorth threw one of her incredible dinner parties with special guests including Luna and Jimmy, Michael Forest and Diana, and our new friends Leonard Stern and his wonderful wife Gloria Stroock. Most people know Gloria from her role on “McMillan & Wife”. Leonard is one of the biggest names in television comedy history, with credits as a writer on “The Honeymooners” with Jackie Gleason, Sgt. Bilko with Phil Silvers, The Steve Allen Show, and my all time favorite, “Get Smart”, with Don Adams. Leonard was was Executive Producer on “Get Smart”, and getting the opportunity to hear stories from the set made me giddy.
Sure nice to see you guys! Oh hey… we’ll also catch up with Steve Canyon, and Dick Tracy later… so you all come back now, y’hear?
Waste not, want not. The Nausican begat the Xindi, and that begat something expensive down the line when we really needed it.
Benjamin Franklin must have been watching Star Trek when he said… ” Beware of little expenses: a small leak will sink a great ship.” If we had a good design that was rarely seen, it wasn’t unusual to “repurpose”. http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/deja-vu-all-over-again/
Todays subject is the Xindi repurpose of a Nausican design. Here now with some background is Professor Jörg -
” The ship was seen, as a Nausicaan raider, in “Fortunate Son”. The model appeared again, completely unchanged, as a science vessel of an unnamed species that attacks Enterprise in “Bound”. The model was modified and Xindi-fied to appear as a Xindi-Insectoid patrol ship in “Stratagem” and “Azati Prime”. In the first episode, it was only part of the simulation seen through the simulation ship’s window. In “Azati Prime” it was seen for real as an underwater craft used by the Xindi-Insectoids.” – Jörg
“Kago-Darr, played by Robert O’Reilly (better known for playing Gowron), was the owner of a nifty little cargo ship seen in the ENT Season 2 episode “Bounty”. The unique starship design only appeared in this episode and was not seen again in later seasons. The ship is characterized by a unique placement of four engine pods. One is located on the dorsal side of the ship and three in a row are located on the ventral side. The hull colour is similar to that of Klingon or Orion designs from that era, we never learn the name of Kago-Darr’s species though (and he certainly doesn’t look Klingon or Orion).”
Bless you Jörg.
Rick Sternbach’s fusion of Japanes anime concepts and the famous hospital ship “Hope”, for Star Trek Voyager.
“The Dinaali hospital ship 4-2 for the Voyager episode “Critical Care” was inspired in equal parts by the flying city of Laputa from the Hayao Miyazaki anime feature “Castle in the Sky” and the mysterious floating city Tiphares from another anime film, “Battle Angel Alita.” In all three cases, the elite were positioned above the rest of the citizenry of the world. The higher levels of the hospital vessel insured better care for potentially more productive citizens, with less care applied to people in the lower levels of society. Not exactly ripped from today’s headlines, since the health care situation has been like that here for a very long time, but the story was compelling nonetheless. The distinct levels in the rough CG sketch were more pronounced than in the final, with the stylistic equivalent of field tents on the lower areas, and nicer buildings nearer to the apex.” - Rick Sternbach
TM, ®, © CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. all Rights Reserved. Continue reading ‘Dinaali Hospital Ship’
You must be this tall to ride the Subspace Catapult!
A classic science fiction concept reminescent of the giant cannon from Jules Verne’s “The Earth To The Moon. Not a “stargate”, but in essence an enormous warp slingshot in space. Designed by Rick Sternbach for “Voyager”, it’s one of those ideas that stays with you… although you could lose your lunch riding it!
Rick’s Markonian outpost gives the impression of a densely packed seaport. VFX chose lots of above and below centerline camera angles, stacking the outpost’s elements up dramatically.
This is one cool space port as designed by Rick Sternbach for Voyager. It dares to be different. What I love about it is that it gives the feeling of a community. The fact that it is layed out on a horizontal plane like a terrestrial dock makes it unusual, and sets it apart.
“The Markonian outpost wasn’t described in any sort of detail in the script. Most ships and stations weren’t, and we were left to develop the required visual style to make it distinct from other hardware seen in the series. As I was doodling this station on paper and on the computer, a thought struck me about places we had visited before. I posed a question to our VFX producer Peter Lauritson; since we have seen so many run-down and dirty facilities before, how about making this one nice looking? Like the culture had some money behind it, and could afford the upkeep? So I decided to make this place into a space-going marina with a lot of slips for visiting ships. As you can see, Peter and the other producers gave it a thumbs-up.” – Rick Sternbach
Continue reading ‘Hirogen Hunter and Venatic Dreadnought Class – UPDATED!’
Brandon MacDougall rendered this shot of “Toxie” fresh baked… for you folks right here, right now.
“I don’t have a whole lot to say about the tanker, except that I wanted it to look massive, which the large spherical tanks seem to accomplish. The spew nozzles are there, along with lots of supporting hardware like the carapace/spine, brackets, tubes, and so on. I didn’t develop a real style for the shapes and surfaces until the later mega-tanker, which relied heavily, so to speak, on slightly streamlined and repeating parts with a good old retro feel. Think steam and diesel locomotives.” – Rick Sternbach
(Below) Rick’s concept sketch for “Toxie”. This is a different look for Rick, having an almost Moebius irreverence about it
It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s… its…
Taking a break from Klingons this morning, allow me to present what is undoubtedly the strangest and most unusual spaceship to ever appear on Star Trek. This is the Hierarchy ship from “Tinker tenor Doctor Spy”, from Voyager. As offbeat and oddball as this ship is, I applaud how different it is. I sometimes felt that the ship designs looked like they came from the same factory (which in fact they did), but when you turn out hundreds of concepts on an impossible schedule, budget, and with a finite staff, it can’t be helped. This ship began with a couple of design sketches from Rick, but quickly became a special project between Dan Curry and Brandon MacDougall. I happen to love this strange contrivance, but I have to admit that I’m thinking sour cream, chives, and bacon bits, how about you?
Rick Sternbach recalls designing “Dauntless” -
“The U.S.S. Dauntless, NX-01-A, was another one of those tempting bits of get-home technology that turned out to be too good to be true for the Voyager crew. Actually an alien ship disguised by the crafty Arturis (whose name is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the name of the star Arcturus), the Dauntless was to be used against the humans as revenge for not wiping out the Borg when they had the chance, setting Arturis’ people free.
My old buddy from Foundation Imaging days, Brandon MacDougall, just sent me this extremely cool rendering of the timeship, U.S.S Relativity, from Voyager. He rendered it anew, especially for you guys! Click for a better look at Brandon’s outstanding work.
(Below) And thank you Rick for sending your original plans along. Continued on the next page.
The MIDAS array, or Mutara Interdimensional Deep-Space-Transponder Array System, was a Communicatuions array developed jointly between Starfleet and the Vulcans.
Designed by the science driven Rick Sternbach, the MIDAS array is located near a small gas cloud, it utilized hyper-subspace technology to greatly reduce the time it would take for a message to reach its destination. The array had three arms covered with hundreds of small blue panels, and three small emitters in between the arms. When the array was active, it launched a small targeting device from the center of the dish that the three emitter-arms would fire a beam at. The targeting device then compressed the energy into a single beam.
Everyone remembers Rick Sternbach’s design for the ill fated U.S.S Equinox. This vessel was the lynchpin to one of Voyager’s strangest and most disturbing episodes. It’s also one of the coolest starfleet offshoots ever, and is also a cousin to DS-9′s Borg busting Defiant.
It’s another lucky day for us, ’cause Rick Sternbach has just beamed in the fascinating story of designing this snappy pocket starship!
New science vessel…new science vessel…I remember it as if it were yesterday. About the same time that the U.S.S. Intrepid was being built, an admiral over at the Advanced Starship Design Bureau asked one of his fellow officers, “Bob, you know that OML construction file your team morphed into the Defiant? Mind if I run with the original for a science ship? If we replace some of the torp tubes with sensor pallets, it ought to run about half a warp factor faster with the same reaction core.” You’ve heard it here before; we never throw anything away, so a shelved hull design got a second chance and became the Equinox, and even later got modded into the U.S.S. Rhode Island.
Amazing Rick’s Jupiter Station design for Voyager… a design which cleverly used decomissioned starship hulls. I asked Rick Sternbach for some background and memories of designing this outstandingly cool space station. As a kid who grew up on Bonnestell, and Freeman, Jupiter Station was the kind of thing that kept Rick awake at night as a kid. Here is master space artist Rick Sternbach with the low down -
Jupiter Station was one of those little treat assignments that came around only once in a great while on Star Trek. That’s not to say that the hundreds of other vehicles and props weren’t fun – this is Trek we’re talking about and it was 99.44% fun. Jupiter Station was particularly fun because it afforded a giddy chance to do things with the hardware that hadn’t been done before.
Continue reading ‘Rick Sternbach + Jupiter Station = Classic Starfleet’
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