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Enterprise episode #34 “The Communicator” offered the art depart a real fun story to work with. It called for an alien race that had flying technologies that were fairly primitive compared to Starfleet but pretty advanced from a general aviation point of view. The director was a fan of German jets from WWII and we all new which little jet had to provide the inspiration. The ME 262 was one Germany’s most feared invention,, while the rest of the world were flying prop jobs, Hitlers engineers upped their efforts and started to make rockets and jets. Despite the advancements it always depended on the pilot and not the aircraft when it came to who would win in a dog `
Pierre's cg model
fight and many of these technologically advanced beauties were shot done by your average old Propeller driven airplane. In designing this new type of alien aircraft The Me 262 was combined with an even earlier style of plane,,,the biplane , all this was thrown in the mixing bowl with a sprinkle of sci fi and after it baked a while, this new little vehicle was ready to go. All together there were 4 or 5 concepts pitched for this plane and this one is the final approved piece. here are some of the drawings and a frame of the CG model created by Pierre from Eden FX.
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
Awesome, and a nice tie-in to “our” technology.
Another cool design, I wish we had seen a little more of it on screen, though. Like the Kradin ships from VOY “Nemesis”, those ships really take their inspiration from Earth aircraft.
Here are two shots of the ships in action:
And thanks for including the orthographic views of the ship and the shot of the CG model, those are priceless and can be used to update the sideview of the ship in Bernd’s starship database.
I’m wondering if you could maybe shed some light on the design process for those ships. You take what is found in the script of a given episode plus some input from the producers/directors etc and start designing a ship. You do a lot of different designs until one of the designs is agreed on. After that, you do orthographic views, like the ones seen above, of the final design and a colour painting of the ship and then hand it over to the CG folks to turn it into a 3-D craft? Is that about right?
you nailed it!!! that’s the process
Yay, got it right, cool! 🙂 Of course, I didn’t ask this without an ulterior motive… 😉
Here comes: The Star Trek Fact Files magazine, a source for many orthographic views of various starships from all series, never did extensive articles about the Enterprise starships because it finished publication around the first season of Enterprise. That is why we barely have any good views, especially side-views of those ships. As you can see here in Bernd’s starship database, many of those sideviews are approximations of screenshots.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/unknown_ships.htm
So, if I dare to ask, if you still have some of those orthographic views for ships you designed, like the ship from “The communicator”, could you post them as well? It would be great to make the starship database as accurate as possible to give people a close and good look at all the cool starship designs that were seen in Enterprise.
Man, I love alien Star Trek starship designs. That’s what got me started writing articles about various aspects of Star Trek in the first place.
Wow, that’s a really neat design, very organic looking but it still evokes a sense of *retroness*. Great job 🙂
I suspect this was done for the same episode. This was up for sale on eBay a few years ago.
Oh, almost forgot about that. Here’s the complete lot with more concept sketches:
http://startrekpropcollector.com/trekauctions/images/790ee7691e64fcab0196f8c136199f87
That’s very cool! I love how it’s like a high speed craft but incorporates the biplane idea.
Ozylot I was thinking the same thing Mate.
This is a really great desgin and you can really see the ME 262 in it.
This is an awesome! I love your trek deesigns, and I love airplanes, this is the best of both worlds 😀
Thanks! Another empty spot filled!
BTW, here is a website with many experimental aircraft designs (“Wunderwaffen”), most of which only existed on the drawing board:
http://www.luft46.com/
There are a few designs resembling the “Communicator” fighter.
I have not much to add to the comments of this bright and well-informed group. The influence of the ME 262 is cool, as it the “retroness” as Borgman said. The combination of styles makes for one very cool craft.
Bernd, thanks for that link…lots of interesting concepts there! I particularly liked the Henschel HS P.75 and think it would make a cool adaptation for an alien design.
Thanks for sharing the concept art for this beauty. I’ve tried pausing and zooming in on my DVD but you just can’t get a good enough look at these on the show. That’s another great design from a great episode. I love the whole “visited by aliens” theme on a 20th century world but with the reversal of humans being the aliens.
Gotta love it, as the 262 was uber-ccol as is, and love what you did with it dude. 🙂
LLP,
deg
What a beautiful little plane.
I always wanted to see a 3-view of this plane! Thanks for posting it!
As mentioned before – that plane would make a great Luft’46 or Crimson Skies aircraft.
Cheers
Thorsten
Great design, interesting take on convergent design evolution!
Thanks!!! This one was a real hoot to work on!!!