The art of Starbase Yorktown, from Sean Hargreaves and Milena Zdravkovic

My new favourite thing in the entire Star Trek multiverse is Starbase Yorktown; that staggeringly beautiful structure is one of the most amazing creations to ever grace the screen, and a perfect icon of the Federation utopia. Indeed, designer Sean Hargreaves put that rather perfectly when I talked to him about it:

Yorktown was what Roddenberry's entire source material was about. Living together in harmony, with other planets and cultures we have all discovered.

As a big fan of the design, I am of course really pleased that Sean has shared much of his artwork from the production of Star Trek Beyond, which details how he and other artists created this beautiful thing.

Let's start on the outside, with the outer doors that let starships fly into the very heart of the base. The first image here shows an earlier iteration of the design, which was later widened.

This next sequence continues the Enterprise's journey inside the base, showing the staggering scale, and glimpses of that lovely see through quality of the design that makes the cities visible from within the arms, and lets ships travelling within be seen under the waterways in the arms.

Here's another interior image, this one of the USS Franklin manoeuvring around the central area of the starbase.

The air-side of that central area is perhaps the most amazing part of the whole station, where different planes of gravity collide in dizzying fashion. Sean described what is going on here, and how he worked with others to create it:

This oxygen fan and 4 gravity plane area was a collaboration between myself and Art Director Dan Hermansen. Milena Zdravkovic also did a beautiful rendering with more green and trees. I always thought of this as an industrial hub. Dan Designed the Cool circular room at the end of the film where the fight takes place, known as the 'Zero Point Chamber'. Note the 2 Dubai Burg buildings on the right which were an agreement between the production and Dubai as we were shooting there.

And here is that other greener version, from Milena Zdravkovic:

Leading to this central point are those huge arms, with cities built along them. They are apparently 17.5 miles long!

And finally, lets travel to another strange new world from the film. Sean has also shared the following image from the prologue of the film, what would eventually become the planet Teenax. It seems the joke on scale was played to an even greater extent early on:

Heres an early image of Kirk on the opening planet, before script changes. The planet was sulfurous and bubbly at this early point in the script. The creatures were even smaller and lived in these termite like growths. Kirk puts his hand in and........

I will be posting more production artwork from Star Trek Beyond in the coming days, including a very special ship also designed by Sean Hargreaves. To keep track of all the latest information on the film, including other behind the scenes coverage, visit my Star Trek Beyond guide page.

Sean meanwhile has made some of his work publicly viewable on his Facebook profile, and you can see more of his wider portfolio on his website.