Roddenberry Vault: Week 2 - Making the Enterprise

Throughout 2016 the Roddenberry Facebook page will be posting artefacts from their archives, including behind the scenes documents, production artwork, and photos. Dubbed the Roddenberry Vault, there will be new posts every day, some times multiples. To make sure you don't miss any of these insightful glimpses into the production of Star Trek, I will be posting weekly summaries.

It has been a good time to be starship design fan in the second week of posts form the Roddenberry Vault, with oodles of concept art showing us some quite exotic forms the USS Enterprise could have taken, plus images of the early filming miniatures. Continue below for information on this week's posts:

There were a few pieces of concept art posted in the first week, but the Enterprise has found many more unusual forms in the most recent posts. In this first image, posted on day eight, we can almost see the familiar shape of the Enterprise, yet it is also quite different, and oddly enough seems to pre-empt one of the most recent starship designs, the USS Vengeance!

Most of the rest of the posts from the week are described as being from the fourth phase of design, which seems to have taken the Enterprise down many possible paths. This image from day nine has an almost submarine feel to it.

Also from day nine is this promo photo of James Doohan, aka Scotty:

Day ten gave us a double dose of concept art, with a small-scale ship with landing gear, and a something much more familiar, with a saucer and nacelles, but also a sphere at the other end!

A different iteration of the sphere with nacelles was posted on day eleven, along with a rather more generic concept.

And the holey saucer returned on day twelve!

On day thirteen we get the Enterprise in her (almost) final form. Not the OK, signed off by Gene Roddenberry.

And from drawings the ship becomes reality, in this images also posted on day thirteen, with Gene Roddenberry and small version of the filming miniature.

The final images of week two is one that seems quite familiar, after it went a bit viral last year, picturing three of men who built the full size pilot episode miniature, Richard C. Datin, Jr., Mel Keys, and Vernon Sion, standing with their creation.

And that was week two. Make sure you follow the Roddenberry Facebook page to catch posts as they come out each day. And be sure to click through to the original posts to check out more images and join the discussions.