The only appearance of its exterior.
In the Star Trek universe, there are many versions of the starship Enterprise, but the one from the most distant future is currently the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701-J), better known as the Enterprise-J. Its sleek and futuristic body might not appeal to everyone, but I think it looks gorgeous. It operates in an alternate timeline during the 26th century, so sadly, I doubt we will ever see it again.
The only appearance of the ship’s exterior was in the background on a computer screen in the Azati Prime episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Since the writing staff was pressed for time, they quickly agreed on naming it J. They originally planned for an exterior shot showing the Enterprise-J in its glory in the middle of the battle, but they had to drop it because of budget reasons. Both the visual effects department and Manny Coto regretted this outcome.
Doug with a model of his Enterprise (NX-01) design.
The Enterprise-J was designed by Doug Drexler, who started out in fandom, and has proven to be one of the most versatile production staffers in the Star Trek franchise. One of his most famous contributions was his design of the Enterprise (NX-01). He ever had an amazing blog called Drex Files, where he wrote about his behind the scenes experiences in the world of Star Trek. Unfortunately, some of his VFX colleagues took exception to the drex files watermark he put on every image, and apparently felt Doug was taking unfair credit for others’ work, even though he always went out of his way to give credit where credit was due. Sadly, because of this, Doug decided to take his blog down, however, you can still find some of it at the Internet Archive (Drex Files was active from 2009 until 2013).
While designing the Enterprise-J, Doug only had two days before a production meeting, so the model was bashed out in a matter of hours. The look of the ship, aside from the ship’s observation deck, was not described in the final draft script of Azati Prime, and it only specified that the Enterprise-J was to be armed with a futuristic particle beam weapon.
Loading ...Doug deemed the Enterprise-J to be a multigenerational ship, with a population of maybe a million. He estimated the length of the vessel to be about 3.2 km (2 mi), which, until this day, still makes it the largest starship Enterprise to appear anywhere on screen. He didn’t have enough time to determine things like the number of decks and the crew complement on board the ship, and an official class name for this type of ship has not been confirmed, although Doug approves of the Universe class.
The Enterprise-J’s observation deck.
He also speculated that the interior of the ship, which he didn’t approve of and was designed by Lee Cole, was actually built for Archer, just so he could relate to it. Doug hypothesised that the crew might be doing all the interfacing with the ship in their heads, and jokingly suggested that the craft might contain just a room with a toilet. However, he conceded that wouldn’t be very interesting for audiences to watch.
ENTERPRISE-J
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