high profile version
version 2
cu
they Borged my ride
pierre 1
pierre 2
pierre borged my ride!
During Season II of Enterprise we got wind of a future script #49 called Regeneration. everyone in the art dept.. started to read the little teaser and we all gasped in Horror at about the same time, THE BORG!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!. We all were not feeling to happy about this new TNG alien showing up in an episode of Enterprise before Kirk… well this will throw all lines of trek history out the window. A few days later the first script arrived and reluctantly we all went to our desks and read away… Hey this is OK I thought It does work and it ties into Trek history as defined in First Contact. As you recall The Borg sphere went back in time to destroy the Phoenix warp ship thus changing earths history and killing the threat of Humanity in the future. The Sphere gets fired upon by the Enterprise-E and the evil plot is eliminated…….. Now we are working on Enterprise and this new story picks up on the debris from the sphere being discovered in Antarctica. like ” the Thing” once thawed out the Borg go back to doing what they do best! Assimilation! My job on this one was to create an Arctic exploration vessel that makes the discovery and later becomes Borgified. The fist sketch is high profile vessel that I thought when Borged could form a cube. This idea was passed on and the second sketch got the approval. The ship is lightly based on a stylized snow mobile. Once Borged it goes thru a variety of changes and this second sketch try’s to convey on of the stages of coverage. Pierre over at Eden modeled this one and here are some of his beautiful CG images.
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
I personally found I could get my head around most of the elements of this episode (far more so than the Ferengi one). But the thing that bothered me was this shuttle – but not the design, the fact that is had warp capability. Why would an Antarctic research vessel have warp? It didn’t seem plausible to me that at this stage in Earth’s technological development, every single ship would have warp engines.
this was story driven in the end but it originally was armored and had warp because it was an unescorted ship that was assigned to Admiral Forrest, so by virtue of rank and military attachment, the ship was a step above an average shuttle
Wow, so cool and now that we see Pierre´s adaptation of your design we see the deflector. Now it feels more like a starfleet vessel, when I saw it onscreen I thought something else. Any chance of more of Pierre´s views, side, top and bottom would be just great!
I was looking everywhere for the other views!!! I will post em when i find em!!!
Yeah the arctic surveyor having warp drive was a strange.
But looking at the designs above, luckily it doesn’t look like the craft has visible warp engines. I could definitely see this is a kind of “anti-grav” heavy lifter. Sort of like a high-tech Trek version of a Skycrane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-64_Skycrane)
Go up a few comments and there is the explanation for it’s special features
Oh, and that first concept is pretty damn cool! Maybe not very “Starfleet”, but it’s an interesting shape. It could be an Orion shuttle (the big turrets again :D) for some fat Orion trader.
I was always trying to break the trek mold with something different like there was more than one manufacturer of ships and vessels,,, never worked though!!! HAAA!
Nice, I liked this little ship on screen before it got all assimilated and stuff. Neat design!
thanks. I loved what Pierre did with it!!!
When I first heard they where doing a Borg Episode my reaction was the same as yours.
But it turned into one of my Favorite episode of Ent, maybe the best of season 2. (season 4 is as a whole in my fav. except for the last episode. That still send shivers down my spin.)
Not really sure of the first concept, but it good to see a shuttle with teeth.
That was something that bothered me about ENT, this is the first time Mankind is heading out into the great unknown, what information they did have was limited no thank to the Vulcan’s and their ships are not really armed for defence.
(At least the Ent upgraded their weapons early on in season 1)
The federation has not yet been created and mankind is still pretty barbaric and not as enlightened as they will be TOS or TNG era.
In days gone by when we where still exploring our own world, these explorers still took weapons with them landing on a new landmass as they did not know what dangers was around the corner.
Anyway enough of my rant, back to the Art.
I have to say that I really like your second concept. I also love that you added a little snowman in there. 🙂
The Brogrfied version also looks really sweet as does the CG version of the ship in both stages.
this was story driven because in the space scenes with Enterprise the shuttle needed to have an warp capability so the Borg could modify the technology as opposed to trying to create a propulsion system that wasn’t there to begin with. The shuttle was was armored because it was an unescorted ship assigned to Admiral Forrest, so by virtue of rank and military attachment, the ship was a step above an average shuttle and could put up a good fight if it had to.
Cool! Here’s a shot of the ship from the episode. Sadly, it’s only seen in a snow storm in its unborgified state, that’s why all the cool details, including the Arctic Exploration logo on its side are barely visible. I’d love to see a more views as well, so the logo can also be fully seen.
Love the Forrest’s shuttle design as well! In the end, the regular Enterprise shuttlepod with slightly changed hull markings was used for the scene when Forrest lands at the site.
You are the master of grabs!!! Well done! The decision to have two shuttles developed as the story evolved. the arctic explorer became it’s own ship after the fact, the only change was to remove the heavy armament. and for budget sake the admiral’s shuttle was a slightly modified existing ship
Thanks for the additional input! Your original design for Forrest’s ship would have looked great in 3-D. I guess the episode was quite expensive anyway, as many new ships and sets and spaceshots had to be created. The episode turned out great in the end, nonetheless.
Sadly, the only other time we see this ship again is in ‘Demons’. And there we still don’t get a good look at her.
Thank you so much for allowing us to see her in all her beauty.
It’s unfortunate that the modeler obviously didn’t have enough time to do the design any more justice…
Another fantastic design by an outstanding designer 🙂
as far as the modeling the amount of detail is also determined by the shots. Time is money and the more time spent on details means more money spent on the increased time to do so. being that all the shots of this ship are covered in atmosphere the need for less is what sets what you can do.. Imagine your a dog at a hydrant and your master pulls your you away before your done going!!!!!!!
Oh, that reminds me: It was also seen, in the same colour scheme, in “Twilight” and “Shockwave II” as part of the Earth vessel fleets. In “Demon” the colour was changed and I think the model was slightly modified as well. Man, there were so many cool starships designs in Enterprise that we barely have seen outside of the episodes. I’m looking forward to many more cool blog entries! 🙂
these were all money saving ways of adding #’s without $$$$$$
You know, Star Fleet doesn’t have to buy special built, it can gasp! Buy off the rack.
So I am not too bothered by this.
What bothers me is that it was capable of warp 1.4 max. Why does this bother me? Because there is no “why?” of it. Because they could? Off the rack is one thing, but warp so high performance? Irony.
As to its size, what was the number of crew? How long could it stay out? And so on.
In other words, what is its story?
that is very rational way to look at it,,, but are department is all story driven and the back stories if any are added into the final designs silently.
Too cool dude. Man, I have forgotten so much of the ENT episodes. Good. Now I can go back and watch ’em again. 🙂
Both cool designs, but I’m really diggin’ the first concept (squirrels that one away into the build-list reference folder).
THanks dude! 🙂
LLP,
deg
thanks DEG!!!! can’t wait to see what you come up with with all that’s on your list!!!
The shuttle reminds me of the Jawa sandcrawlers from Star Wars.
HAAAA! I guess your right!!! Those darned Jawas!!!
Wow, thanks for posting these! I think you made my day! While it’s not my favorite episode of the series, I do love the Arctic ship quite a bit. It has a nice ‘secondary hull without a saucer’ feel that I appreciate. I’ve often tried to figure out a good place for the warp engines to go, but like you said it was plot-driven, so maybe they are inboard like on the Sarajevo from later on. (Speaking of which… next post? ;))
And I also saw the Jawa crawler likeness in the initial shuttle concept. And I like it. 😀
Patrick beat me to it. I was thinking Star Wars…the sand crawlers or AT-AT Walkers (without the “walker” part).
As has been mentioned many times already (you boys were at it early today), I was skeptical when I saw the borg on the episode preview but excited at the same time. It was great to see them on ENT, just once, being such a great evil presence in the ST Universe.
The Arctic Explorer looks like some kind of bug. I see that you said you tried to steer away from typical Trek; I actually think that this IS different in a way. It doesn’t bring to mind any other vessels I can think of and has a different feel.
thanks Desert D. it does have a bit of a bug feel.. i am hoping to find the other CG models from Pierre because his profile shot is really boss!
I never saw the episode, but I saw this ship in the SOTL 2008 version and was blown away by it. Now that I’ve read your story synopsis, I realize that image captures that ep nicely.
As a lifelong reader of National Geographic, there’s one thing that has bothered me since I first saw the image though — why does it say “Arctic Explorer” instead of “Antarctic Explorer”? “Arctic” doesn’t mean “cold”, it means “bear” which refers to Ursa Major in the northern sky. Arctic = North Polar region, not ANY polar region. Especially ironic when used against a map of Antarctica.
OK, I’ll take my nerd hat off now. Great ship design, John, as always!
Don, thanks for that info. I normally notice those things; however, I didn’t know where the word arctic came from…very interesting! I’m sure I’ll find a way to impress my sisters with more “useless information”. 🙂
It says arctic because i didn’t put enough research into the title!!!! HAAA! never thought these would ever be seen by anybody especially for corrections for my errors!!! Thanks for setting me strait on the subtleties!!!
My attempt at the Trek version of a “No-Prize”:
The ship was reassigned on the spur of the moment, and the detailers at Starfleet Iqaluit didn’t get a chance to fix the paint job in time.
Definitely the best episode from Season 2. And they really did a fantastic job on the script, from finding the drones in Antarctica, to the end, the Borg never revealed too much about themselves to change continuity. And, since they never returned for 200 years, the mission report probably wound up as a sentence or two in some obscure history book, explaining how Picard and his crew probably wouldn’t have found it in a search, even if they’d thought to look.
And, once again, another great design. I think the shuttle itself is awesome (it appeared in some later group ship shots, didn’t it?) and I love how he Borgified it. I especially love how it happened slowly over the course of the episode. 🙂
I agree, it didn’t effect the continuity of the time line and yes it was used in a couple of group shots in other episodes!
NP dude, thank YOU! (bows)
And yeah, I’m just about done with Ryan’s design (been kinda draggin’ me heels of late, but I’m just about done now) and then your D7 (?) is up next, as I have some ideas for the 2011 SOTL calendar I want to start workin’ on, eh.
If that’s cool with you that I would use you design of course…
LLP,
deg
they Borged my ride
BTW, (chimpy chortle) too funnee dude. 😀
PLL,
deg
By taking a more careful look at the stern, I think that there is only one warp engine. So we have a possbile hirearchy of ships here. Going from impulse only, to impluse powered warp drive(Arctic One) to those ships that have two full warp engines… All the way up to the NX-01.
Why?
Okay, the shuttle pod is the Cessna 150 through Cessna 172.
Arctic One is a turboprop.
The rest are jet engined…
Were do I get this? Well it starts with the child Jonathan’s flying model – using antigrav tech. If they could build a unit that small, then having to build one or a set ones for the shuttle pod becomes more likely. That is, I view the shuttle pod as having four antigrav units, for among other things – control. I mean fine control at that, think in terms of a dragonfly…
So there is a range of craft, just like todays aircraft. Each designed according to some need, with enough exta capability to cross over the lines if need be.
So Arctic One had a warp engine to handle those times when it would be needed. Think in terms of an early runabout.
Cool design.
Sadly, I found that the Borg were definately over used. After First Contact, I’d expected the Borg to be dead, finally. After all, it was a huge movie, and Picard deserved to kill them all by killing the Borg Queen. But then, they returned in Voyager as the regular villain. And then they even appeared in Enterprise. Waaaayyy too often for my taste. 😉
Wow your blog is getting better and better every day ! I must say that the drawings inspired me well enough for me to buy a bunch of good pencils and a special pen for making sketches (I used only standard pencil earlier).
I would be very grateful if you could find some other views because I’m doing some CGI work for a fan Enterprise-based cartoon and I would like to make the ship for our little “show” (hopefully we’ll find a way to get it into some shots).
That Pierre is one skilled modeler! As always, this is a fantastic creation, John! I definitely see the snowmobile inspiration in it which I think give is a very interesting design. Different, but yet still could be Starfleet!
I remember hearing that a lot of fans were gearing up with the pitchforks and torches when they heard about this episode (some even after they saw it). Mike Sussmann gave a great interview where he talked about how the story tied into everything. It was always nice to know that Star Trek was in good hands, even when it wasn’t fully appreciated. 🙂