Titan Fleet Yards

As you have probably seen by now on TrekMovie, this week the first proper images of Star Trek were released! By the way, if you absolutely don’t want spoilers, don’t click any links in this post.

To boldly go...

There are four major revelations: the uniforms, the Bad Guy, the USS Kelvin and the new bridge. Of these, the new bridge is definitely the most controversial, so I’ll save that for last.

The first thing I have to say is that whatever Abrams and co. want to call it, the new movie is at the very least a visual reboot of the series. Now, I have never been opposed to that idea (in fact, I think they should’ve unambiguously labelled it as such right from the start to set the right tone). I think a (re)start of Star Trek has been long overdue. As Manny Coto already showed in Enterprise season 4,  a fresh pair of eyes on the material can bring back the excitement that I felt was lacking from later seasons of Voyager and Enterprise in particular.

In the few years since Enterprise was cancelled, I have found myself embracing more and more of the ‘non-canon’ Star Trek fiction. I believe that the traditionally very strict approach to Star Trek canon is one of the reasons the later series became more and more formulaic in their stories. Burdened by 40 years of minutiae, it’s probably about time for a ‘clean slate approach’ of some degree, and I sincerely hope Abrams has had the guts to change things beyond just visuals. If Star Trek succeeds at being a truly new and contemporary piece of science fiction, then it could start an exciting new era for the franchise.

So, in short, I know all the old canon, so I’m looking forward to something new and fresh to get excited about.

New uniforms

The new uniforms are probably the one thing that is closest to the original series style, but updated to a suitably ‘advanced’ look. The overshirt/undershirt is a sensible extension of the design, and nost importantly, the uniforms actually look quite comfortable to wear. Although the little delta symbols in the fabric may be a bit too cute.

Nero

Although we’ve had bad experiences with a certain bald nemesis in the previous movie, what’s really not to love about a bald tattoed Romulan sitting on a throne and wielding a mace? The tattoos echo the shape of the old TOS Romulan helmets, although this Nero character looks much more rough than regular “Imperial” Romulans. I just hope he has no Human DNA or anything silly like that.

The Kelvin

Strangely, even with a prequel and remastered series behind us, we still have very little to go on regarding contemporary TOS era designs outside what the fans designed. So technically, this is one of the first major ‘canon’ (okay, I’m sorry) starship designs from the TOS era that isn’t the Enterprise.

The Kelvin is presumably named after William Thomson aka Lord Kelvin, the namesake of the temperature scale. It is a ship from a time “before Kirk’s birth”, according to Abrams. George Kirk, Captain Kirk’s father, is apparently the XO of this ship, so I would tentatively place this design in the second half of the 2220s.

USS Enterprise under construction.

Compared to the Enterprise above, we can see that there was a conscious effort to make it look older and less glamorous. Its design reminds of me of the Saladin class designed by Franz Joseph and similar destroyer types. All in all, I think its a sensible design that would probably even fit the established timeline.

The bridge

The bridge is probably the single largest clue that this is movie represents a visual overhaul. It’s too early to really make a judgement about the bridge. It certainly looks different, but clearly inspired by the TOS bridge with consoles and information displays making up the outer ring. To be blatantly honest, it does look a little too cluttered, and I’ve never been a big fan of those particular types of large transparent information walls. But again, we don’t really know what it looks like until we see everything in action.

One little thing that got me excited were the “swan neck” lights on the standing console, a classic element from the very early TOS bridge. The curves of the standing console also bring out that retro/TMP style that I really like.

Now all we really need is an outside shot of the Enterprise and then we can start designing ships in the New Style