J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Enterprise Photo

Posted by on November 12th, 2008   Filed under: Posters and Marketing, Sci-fi, TV
Source: EW Popwatch

As we anxiously await the first full trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, which will be playing with North American prints of Quantum of Solace this weekend, Paramount continues to give us little tidbits of marketing to hold us over including a couple of new black and white character posters of Kirk and Spock, and the first full photo of the new/old Enterprise!

I understand that this slightly remodeled Enterprise has sparked some intense debate among Trekkies. Personally I don’t think it’s all that different… it’s still instantly recognizable, and fairly consistent with the design from The Original Series. I mean, did people really expect them to keep it looking exactly the same? The bottom line is that it’s just a ship, but from what we’re hearing, the new movie might feature a lot more exterior shots and space battles involving the Enterprise so I guess that makes it a bit more important. What do you think of the look of the new Enterprise? Does it do the original justice?



  • Bob The Slob

    J.J. Abrams = pretty boy shit…I’ve never liked anything he’s been involved with.

  • Bob The Slob, I’ve pretty much liked everything that Abrams has done, so I guess I’m into “pretty boy shit.” (Hmm… I like Gossip Girls, too.) Now that I think about it, it would be pretty strange if I didn’t like the new Star Trek movie considering that I like what Abrams does. I even like Fringe for heaven’s sake.

    As for the new Enterprise, “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” I think James Doohan would have approved. I can’t wait to get my hands on the plastic model kit.

  • RonSalon

    Ruined the Enterprise… Killed the franchise… Gene Roddenberry would roll over in his grave… Hurt….

    Give me a friggin’ break. People are lame, not because their opinion doesn’t agree with mine, but the new E looks like Star Trek — period. Ooh, the nacelles are bigger or fatter or whatever. Jesus H. Crimeny. Maybe they shouldn’t have made a new movie and then people would have nothing to complain about.

    You know what? You can’t make everyone happy. I think getting upset over important things would be a better use of peoples’ time. I am sure people are being treated horribly somewhere, but people sit on their bums complaining about a make believe space ship’s design. Good grief.

    I can understand why Shatner made the reference, “Get a life.”

    I have been reading, not only on this site but others, and most people like it. However, the naysayers who hate it will leave me elbow room at the theatre as I suspect it goes against their fanboy religion to see a Trek movie with an Enterprise that has large naccelles.

    And as for me… I love it!

  • Bob The Slob

    Reed, didnt mean to offend…I have NO problems at all with this image or the way the new trek is going…my comment was just about abrams. Honestly I dont really care about this new star trek much, nor am I a “trekkie,” “trekker,” or “trekken” …but as any film fan would agree…Wrath of Kahn is pretty much genius no matter how you slice it. I also love when they go to the 80’s to save the whales, because…well…they go to the 80’s.

    If I had an opinion, I guess I would be sickened by anyone playing the cast besides the originals, mainly because there is only ONE James T. Kirk, and his name be Bill Shatner. I realize he is young in this film, but to quote the great patton oswalt when he was having a fake discussion with Master Lucas “I dont want to know where the things I like came from, I JUST LIKE THE THINGS I LIKE!” Plus the cast doesnt look like star trek, it looks like a bunch of actors playing actors playing characters (I would give the benefit of the doubt, we havent seen the acting yet). As much as I think Simon Pegg kicks all kinds of ass, he still looks silly in the uniform and just says “i’m simon pegg, i’m in this star trek movie and by the way i’m simon pegg” same with karl urban…etc…thankfully pegg isnt doing an impression. And if you wanted to get on my ass about the fact that everyone is either too old or dead to do another ST movie with the original cast, then I would give the same simple solution to you that I would to anyone that would argue about a remake, sequel, reimagining, or rehash of GHOSTBUSTERS, KARATE KID, THE THING, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, ROBOCOP, INDY, ANYTHING THAT WAS ONCE UNRAPED…solution: DONT FUCKING DO IT! Of course that makes alot less money. so it wont happen.

    HOLY SHIT…maybe I do have an opinion and I care…wow.

  • swarez

    Why is Kirk looking at me like a rapist?

  • He kind of looks like Michael C. Hall in that poster.

  • Ian

    Looks kind of like the Enterprise C. The nacelles are bulky … still it’s better looking than that giant whale of a ship that they had in the Next Generation. For my money the best looking ship is the E, then the A.

  • SolesGirlRachel

    There’s just no way that this can be a genuine photo of Abrams’ Original Series U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. To paraphrase a famous, bald Stafleet captain: “No. I am *not* looking at the real Enterprise. Because I refuse to believe that Star Trek is being re-booted in *every* possible detail, right down to pushing this monstrosity, this impostor, onto the public. The universe is not so badly designed.”

    The saucer looks much more like the TMP refit / Enterprise-A than the Original Series’ Enteprise. It has the thicker look and darker rings around the edges of the saucer section too, just like the TMP refit and the A, that aren’t seen in the 2260s version.

    The neck clearly looks like someone has tried (bafflingly, and unsuccessfully) to blend both the sloping neck of the TMP refit & A, as well as the differently sweeping curves of the late 24th century’s Enterprise-E for goodness sakes. Again, nothing like the TOS Enterprise.

    And the less said about the nacelles, my goodness…they are not symmetrical, they are ugly as sin, they look needlessly puffy…the curves in the nacelles and nacelle struts attaching them to the secondary hull make NO sense, none at all. They look like badly warped versions taken from the Ambassador-class Enterprise-C. (!!!) This whole thing looks like a non-TOS-fan teenager, with an overzealous love for sloping curves and TNG, put this monstrosity together in an imaging program.

    Even the secondary hull – again, draws on the TMP refit and the A for – you guessed it: sloping curves. WTF??

    You don’t take an icon that is known for 40 years plus throughout the world by fans and non-fans alike – an icon that prompted the naming of both the first-ever NASA shuttle & the first-ever commercial spaceship in said icon’s honour – and decide to *completely* re-design it from top to bottom in order to appeal to “young people who have never seen Star Trek”, thereby casting aside 40+ years of fans as no longer being relevant. Such action casts aside 40+ years of inspiration, and unique success. It casts aside what has been one of the most profitable franchises in history with the disdainful words: “Oh, every last thing about [The Original Series] was unbelievable and no good for a modern movie. Star Trek Remastered is crap too. The people who loved that, we’re not targeting them. Their time has past. We’re targeting young people who have never seen a Trek episode or film before – that’s where the real money is! We’re changing everything, just because we can and we really want to distance ourselves from everything that has gone before. Right down to the phasers, material of the uniforms – and the ship – you’ll barely recognize the ship once we redesign it.”

    Q! We’re here! This has gone on long enough!!!

  • Bob The Slob

    solegirlrachel,

    how pissed will you be in a few years when they remake Star Trek 4: The voyage home, except instead of going back to the 80’s for whales, they will go back to 2008 for Chihuahuas from Bevery Hills?

    Calm down, they are taking a dump on EVERYTHING every fan of ANYTHING has loved for the past 30 years…that’s what hollywood is right now, a giant tormented anus spewing liquid assvomit on anything any popculture fan has even slightly, kinda, sorta, liked.

    CEO: “what? people love Evil Dead 2!!! get me a script written by friday, I want the Rush Hour guy to direct, and the Indy Jones Kid to star…take out all the blood, the chainsaw violence, the tree rape…check the market, see what food condiment companies are shelling out the most for endorsements, the cabin in the woods will have a fridge right? We’ll get a fridge and the main character can open it a few times…wait, forget the cabin, how about an entire house, and none of that deadite shit…just black smokey crawling crap and wierd children ghosts, like the Grudge…is the Grudge guy available to write?”

  • Greg

    I am going to make a post in a Star Trek column. Strange.

    @SolesGirlRachel – I’m not a fan of Star Trek, but I have to say I am impressed with your post. For the most part, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I can appreciate the passion.

    @Bob The Slob – That Chihuahua thing was pretty funny. Also, “a giant tormented anus spewing liquid assvomit” might be the worst thing I have ever read.

    Kudos to both of you.

  • I understand where many fans are coming from. I grew up on Star trek. Love TOS, TNG and Voyager. can’t say I was a big fan of DS9, but to each their own.

    Star Trek is a franchise and to continue the franchise money is needed. Where were the complaints when the series Enterprise was released. Alot of the sets were modernized and this did not relect TOS as a matter of fact the Series enterprise was a actually techonolically more advance then the TOS.

    The franchise needs new blood to keep it alive. We as fans will keep the orginal series concepts alive in our hearts, but today we need to draw a new generation of fans and it must appeal to them. I like the new Enterprise it is fresh slick and has the lines of a sleek racehorse. as an Admiral of the Starfleet Medical corps once said. Treat her like a lady and she will always bring you home

  • sorry that should have read . Remember she has the right name, treat her like a lady she will always bring you home

  • Jim Hawk III

    Boy, we sure have our panties in a wad here. Let me throw in my 2 cents, as an individual that saw TOS in prime-time.

    1) This new “old” Enterprise looks good to me. I always thought that 1701-A was a vast improvement over the original–and the original was very good. (Sorry, Ian, I’ll take ‘A’ over ‘E’ any day–although ‘E’ is a very nice looking vehicle. Our coin tosses just come up differently.) Certainly NCC-1701 was iconic, and kudos to Matt Jeffries for breaking away from decades of ridiculous Flash-Gordonesque rockets and flying saucer designs (under Gene’s direction, of course). From an artistic standpoint, I have no complaint with allowing modern technology to produce higher-quality visuals than were possible in 1967. If Abrams wants to sweeten the visuals up a bit, then by all means, allow him to do so. The shows and movies were never about the *ship*. They were about the *people* and ideas.

    From another perspective: providing a more direct design lineage to 1701-A isn’t a bad idea. And who among us believes that a realistic view of the 22nd century contains only one starship contractor?

    2) At the end of the day, Star Trek is art, not science. Michelangelo, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso could each paint a picture of the same rose (speaking hypothetically, of course), and yet each painting would be different, and unique. Each would be a worthy rendering of that rose. An Enterprise is an Enterprise is an Enterprise. Recall that it was not cheesy SFX visuals that ruined ST V–it was a bad story and terrible characterization (not from the actors, but from the writers).

    3) At the other end of the day (heh), Star Trek is not just art, but commercial art. I agree with Jerry wholeheartedly. The franchise needs new fans, and those new fans have certain expectations based on their own experiences. The goal of Star Trek, as a franchise, is to make money by telling stories. If redesigning the ship and the props, and telling a different sort of story is the quid pro quo for keeping the franchise active and vital, then this first-generation Trek fan says “energize.”

    4) Ultimately, the marketplace will sort this all out. While I appreciate what SolesGirlRachael has to say, I can’t agree with it completely, because her perspective says we can’t have anything new. It says that if the original show was filmed in black and white, that any modern interpretations should also have been in black and white because “that’s how it’s done.”

    My response to that perspective is: _nothing is lost_. If modern fans see a different NCC-1701 than we saw, and cherish it, then fine. We saw what we saw, and we will always have that. Must the Four Welshmen always wear white tuxedos? (They must be drinking Chateau de Chassilier, but does the tuxedo color matter?) If tomorrow we decide to remake “Forbidden Planet,” must Starship C-57D be a saucer? Must Robby the Robot forever have a glass dome, rubber arms, and analog/mechanical computational equipment? Of course not!

    Abrams is not stealing the past–he is building on it. Is he building well? I don’t know yet. I think it’s a little early for either Cassandra or Pollyanna to be making predictions.

  • Jim Hawk III, thx for putting into words what I think about the new Enterprise. (BTW, I also think 1701-A is the best looking version.)

    I’d be interested to see you comment on some of my Treknobabbles that are of interest to you assuming that there is anything I write that is of interest to you.

    As for SolesGirlRachel, I usually agree with her on most things, but I think in this case, we disagree. I guess she’s a traditionalist at heart.

  • Andrew Wright

    I’m afraid the new, redesigned Enterprise doesn’t impress me. They could’ve made it look up-to-date without completely changing the design (the bridge in particular). It’s nothing but a typical example of bastardisation of a much-loved franchise in the name of money-making. Changed timelines? Please. It’s just an excuse to turn the new Trek movie into an action film so it appeals to more people and thus makes more money.

    Although I don’t want to pass judgment on the film itself until I’ve seen it, I’m expecting this to be more like “J.J. Abrams’ All-Action Space Adventure” with Star Trek slapped on the title to make it sell better. I expect none of the cerebral dialogue and moral decisions the franchise originally came to be famous for. Will it be a good film? Maybe. Will it be good Star Trek? I highly doubt it.

  • Andrew, I’m the kind of Trekkie that other Trekkies hate, because I’m not very judgmental when it comes to the franchise. I’ll watch (and buy) anything with the Star Trek name. I’d be happy if this movie didn’t have any “cerebral dialogue and moral decisions.” Gene Roddenberry hated Nicholas Meyer’s contributions to the Star Trek movies, and yet fans still think The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country are fantastic Star Trek movies.

    I personally think that anything can be Star Trek. Star Trek subsumes everything it comes in contact with and makes it better for me. :-)