The “new” Enterprise and its bridge (opposite, both shots) retained the feel of their forebears, while evoking Roddenberry’s “Technology Unchained”: a harmony of science and quality of life.
Probert built into this starship a major concept that was mentioned first for TNG in the final writers’ guide, though it dates back to earlier Trek incarnations. It is the Enterprise’s ability to separate its two main sections in time of emergency or attack and then later reconnect. Ship separation was referred to in the original series as well—in “The Apple,” when a planet-bound Kirk tells Scotty to “jettison the nacelles and get out in the saucer section if you have to”—but it was never shown because of budgetary restraints.
The film Enterprise was built to separate, but the feature was never utilized.5 Even TNG’s “ship sep” feature was not approved by the studio until well into the pilot’s development because of the extra expense in optical effects and filming models.
Drawings of the new 1701-D, dated December 8, 1986, eventually graced the cover of the final first-season “bible” and first appeared to fans in Gerrold’s July 1987 column in Starlog magazine. Probert later said his biggest challenge was to produce a starship that looked as good in two pieces as it did in one.
At the same time he urged that a battle bridge be added: in effect, an update of the old Constitution-class starship’s auxiliary bridge, relocated atop the battle module’s cobra head and given a direct emergency turbolift from the main bridge. A March 23 sketch for this concept reveals how it was done: the set of the film Enterprise’s bridge would be inexpensively redressed—the first of many such times that would happen on TNG. Meanwhile, Zimmerman’s new main bridge, ready room, and senior quarters/ corridor sets began going up in March on cramped Stage 6, where they would stay a year before being located for good on adjacent Stage 8 once the The Colbys’ mansion set was dismantled after that series’ cancellation.
Meanwhile, on Stage 9, most of the movie ship’s other standing sets were being redressed and expanded. The main engineering area, with many of its components repainted and its spaces enlarged, acquired the Starfleet Command console from Star Trek IV, which was soon referred to as “the pool table.” McCoy’s movie sickbay lost two office walls. One, a bank of consoles, became the back wall of the engineer’s office looking onto the main reactor. The other, the wall of stored samples, eventually turned up as the rows of access plates in the transporter room.
As another money-saver, the first-season observation lounge was a make-over of the movie sickbay. Its windows were covered with carpet for the medical scenes. (A new lounge was built for season two.) Finally all the connecting corridors were made longer and widened for TV use by removing the film sets’ A-frames. The multi-purpose cargo bay-shuttle bay-holodeck-gymnasium set would be erected, over time, from scratch.
Thus, with construction dating back to the first Trek film and the aborted 1977 series, the Stage 8-9 complex houses what Paramount veterans like to point to as the oldest standing sets in Hollywood!
Zimmerman’s crew cabins, carved from the movie-set captain’s quarters, were built for complete versatility. Upward-sliding walls and modular wall units could be reversed to suggest a dormlike, mirror-image floor plan from use to use.6 The windows were later backed by velvet star backdrops—initially hand-cranked, later motorized—to avoid costly visual effects when the ship was not at warp.
Just as the original series had done twenty years earlier, TNG erected on nearby Stage 16 a multilevel canyon-cave set, made of reinforced concrete, to represent planet interiors and exteriors. This set came complete with an area capable of holding water for a “lake” and a gigantic white backdrop that could reflect colored lights to represent any planetary sky color. Because of the hostile environments and strange habitats represented there, the cast and crew soon began to refer to Stage 16 as “Planet Hell.”
Meanwhile, Sternbach stayed busy updating Trek’s famous props and equipment while Okuda began developing the “look” of TNG’s graphics and its new generation of computers. Though they would be modified later after filming began, the tricorder, hand phaser I, and pistol phaser II were all completed in the sketches dated February 6, which Probert prepared for construction bidders. Originally the communicator was to be a wrist device, as in the first Trek movie and outlined in the first two TNG writers’ bibles, but their function was later built into a new metallic Starfleet insignia worn on the chest. A personal monitor tied in to the ship’s computer, not unlike the perscan biomonitor buckles of the first film, was also made a part of the new communicator. The design of the new medical syringe was inspired by a present-day commercial inhaler.
Note minute changes in the first-version tricorder (above) and its successor (below).
While the full-scale environments of TNG were under construction, the miniatures also began to take shape. These models and special optical effects had to be completed on time, on budget, and on the mark in order to meet the expectations of an audience grown accustomed to the optical effects of the feature films.
Early on, a new process was adopted so that TNG could compete for top quality while adhering to a television budget and schedule. All optical effects would be composited digitally on one-inch videotape so as to avoid the slower and more costly process involved in using film stock—not to mention the rapid deteriorating quality of film from one generation to the next when building composites. All live action shot on film would be transferred to tape as well for final editing.
For a time, Milkis revealed, he and Justman considered using only computer-generated effects and miniatures. One company even ran several tests using the old Enterprise design to demonstrate the look that could be produced by computers. “It was incredibly good,” Milkis recalled, “and it took some real thinking on our part, but ultimately we decided that if something ever happened to that company and they couldn’t deliver, then we’d have nothing. We were very concerned about that, and ultimately they did go out of business.”7
Finally, he and Justman turned to Lucas-film’s legendary Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to provide the models of the new Enterprise—a two-foot version and a six-foot model with modules that actually separated. They were built from Probert’s specs and cost about $75,000. Work on the models got under way in March 1987 by an ILM crew of six headed by Greg Jein, a veteran maker of Trek models since the first movie, and Ease Owyeung.
Even before that work got under way, TNG’s producers had looked down the road and decided they could get more FX bang for the buck by building a library of stock shots that could be reused with each other or with new footage each time a different effect was needed.
But after getting budget-busting bids back from four or five effects houses, Justman recalled that ILM, through lucky timing, gave the infant series another break. The famous shop found itself idle for about six months between major motion picture jobs with a lot of overhead to carry—a plant and lots of one-of-a kind personnel.
“What they decided was to make a barebones bid, enough to keep their doors open and keep everyone on that they needed,” Justman said. “Oh, it was a tremendous bid. I couldn’t believe it was so cheap! But it was ILM, you know? The best in the business!”
One new effect, described in a March 15 Justman memo, would come to be a signature of the new series: its own warp-speed jump. The Trek filmmakers had experimented with different types of animation, but Justman considered the results “too cartoony.” So the producer got ILM and TNG’s own Rob Legato—hired by new post-production superviser Peter Lauritson to supervise TNG’s in-house video effects—to design and film what came to be called the “rubber-band effect.” It was a look that Doug Trumbull had actually sought for the first motion picture but had to abandon when he ran out of time: the saucer stretches out until the rear end snaps forward to catch up with it in a huge flash of light, which then fades to reveal the starship, long disappeared.
ILM’s credit remained throughout the series’ end titles, o
wing mainly to the use of that sole effect. “The reality of the situation is that they did effects for the pilot, but even then they just did the raw material; our team composited them,” Lauritson noted. “And everything beyond the pilot we have addressed ourselves; they sent us the film, Paramount transferred it to video.”
Throughout all this, fans had only the tantalizing snippets of news in the mainstream and industry press to keep them posted on the evolving show—along with the ever-active rumor mill via fan clubs, newsletters, and computer bulletin boards. In his Starlog magazine column, Gerrold sought to reassure the faithful that this new Trek would be faithful to the Great Bird’s vision of the future. “Should the new Enterprise find itself in a military situation,” he wrote, “then it will be seen as a failure of the ship’s diplomatic mission.”8
Then, as the rumblings mounted from those who had condemned the show months before it had even evolved, much less aired, Justman took it upon himself to appeal to fans directly. “I’d heard that we were ‘ripping off our own show,’” he recalled. “Now there’s a quote!”
Although he had never been a guest at a Star Trek convention in his life, Justman spoke at the April 18 Equicon in Los Angeles. There he thanked the attendees for keeping the Trek concept alive for twenty years against all odds, and he asked them to “hang in there with us, please” on this new venture. “If we fail, it won’t be for lack of trying,” he told the crowd. “So please bear with us if the new Star Trek doesn’t always meet your expectations. Our little show has become a legend, and it’s hard to live up to a legend. We’re trying hard. We want to succeed. We want to excel. We hope we can. We’re sure going to try.”
Drafting a Crew
In creating the new Enterprise crew, Gene Roddenberry and his team continued to distance TNG from its forebear by striving to shed the familiar and dominating duality of the Kirk-Spock relationship. This time they chose to divide the attributes of that dynamic pair among the new characters so that they could assemble an ensemble cast in the style of 1980s TV dramas like Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and L.A. Law.
The first casting call went out to talent agencies on December 10, 1986. That outline now serves as a sort of historical snapshot, a first official look at the characters as they were shaping up. Here it is, as published in one fanzine newsletter,9 with the original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact:
TO: ALL TALENT AGENCIES
RE: PARAMOUNT “STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION”
1-HR. SERIES FOR SYNDICATION
2-HR. TV MOVIE TO START END OF MARCH
24 1-HR. EPISODES TO START END OF MAY
Exec. Producer: Gene Roddenberry
Supv. Producer: Eddie Milkis
Producer: Bob Justman
Director: TBA
Casting Director: Helen Mossier
Casting Assistant: Gail Helm
WRIHEN SUBMISSIONS—ONLY—TO: HELEN MOSSLER, PARAMOUNT, BLUDHORN 128, 5555 MELROSE AVE., LOS ANGELES, CA 90038
PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT WE DO NOT HAVE A SCRIPT YET AND ARE JUST IN THE PRELIMINARY CASTING STAGES.
SEEKING THE FOLLOWING SERIES REGULARS:
CAPT. JULIEN PICARDEA Caucasian man in his 50s who is very youthful and in prime physical condition, Born in Paris, his gallic accent appears when deep emotions are triggered. He is definitely a Yomantic’ and believes strongly in concepts like honor and duty. Capt. Picard commands the Enterprise. He should have a mid-Atlantic accent, and a wonderfully rich speaking voice.
NUMBER ONE (A.K.A, WILLIAM RYKER)—A 30-35 year old Caucasian born in Alaska. He is a pleasant looking man with sex appeal, of medium height, very agile and strong, a natural psychologist, Number One, as he is usually called, is second-in-command of the Enterprise and has a very strong, solid relationship with the Captain.
LT. COMMANDER DATA—He is an android who has the appearance of a man in his mid 30’s, Data should have exotic features and can be anyone of the following racial groups: Asian, American Indian, East Indian, South American Indian or similar racial groups, He is in perfect physical condition and should appear very intelligent.
LT. MACHA HERNANDEZ—26 year old woman of unspecified Latin decent who serves as the starship’s security chief. She is described as having a new quality of conditioned-body-beauty, a fire in her eyes and muscularly well developed and very female body, but keeping in mind that much of her strength comes from attitude. Macha has an almost obsessive devotion to protecting the ship and its crew and treats Capt. Picard and Number One as if they were saints.
LT. DEANNA TROI—An alien woman who is tall (5′8-6′) and slender, about 30 years old and quite beautiful. She serves as the starship’s Chief Psychologist, Deanna is probably foreign (anywhere from Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, Icelandic, etc.) with looks and accent to match. She and Number One are romantically involved. Her alien “look” is still to be determined.
LESLIE CRUSHER—An appealing 15 year old Caucasian girl (need small 18 or almost 18 year old to play 15), Her remarkable mind and photographic memory make it seem not unlikely for her to become, at 15, a Starfleet acting-ensign, Otherwise, she is a normal teenager.
BEVERLY CRUSHER—leslie’s 35 year old mother, She serves as the chief medical officer on the Enterprise, If it were not for her intelligence, personality, beauty and the fact that she has a natural walk of a striptease queen, Capt. Picard might not have agreed to her request that Leslie observe bridge activities; therefore letting her daughter’s intelligence carry events further.
LT. GEORDI La FORGE—a 20-25 year old black man, blind from birth. With the help of a special prosthetic device he wears, his vision far surpasses anything the human eyes can see. Although he is young, he is quite mature and is best friends with Data. Please do not submit any ‘street’ types, as Geordi has perfect diction and might even have a Jamaican accent, Should also be able to do comedy well.
These initial descriptions of the characters would undergo further revisions as the new production team bandied ideas about and, later, when actors began auditioning for the roles. Not the least of these changes would be the addition of the Klingon, Worf.
“Kirk came out of an earlier time in my life when I was pretending to be part of my macho southern background, and [the character] reflects some of that,” Gene Roddenberry would later tell an interviewer. “Macho feelings about women, and so on. But in twenty-five years, my feelings have changed enormously about those things and I think Picard represents that. He’s more mature.”10
The back story for Picard—given a French heritage in homage to the many Gallic explorers, including Jacques Cousteau—was set down in the very beginning and mentioned a twenty-two-year stint as mission commander of the USS Stargazer. His first name, as well as the spelling of Riker, would not take on their eventual form until sometime between the February 4 revision of the writers’ guide and the final version dated March 23. At that point, however, the captain was given the nickname Luke.
The first-draft “bible” mentions the historical British navy tradition of calling the first officer “Number One,” but neglects to point out the usage in Star Trek’s own history. In the very first 1964 Trek pilot, “The Cage,” Captain Pike’s right-hand officer was a woman known only as Number One. Also, Riker and Troi’s past relationship was originally described as “intimate,” but it was changed to “unconsummated” in the March guide, as he was said to be torn between his feelings for her and a perceived need for detachment in his career. Along with an action-oriented command style and a healthy libido, Riker also shares with predecessor Kirk the middle initial T, although his actual middle name was not chosen until late in the series’ run (“Second Chances”/249).
The first real character dynamic to emerge in this early memo-writing phase, after that of Picard and Riker, centered on Picard and Wesley—ironic in view of many fans’ later disdain for the teenager. The latter two roles, incidentally, carried the names as early as November 8, according to a Justman memo, despite the Dec
ember 15 mention of a girl, “Leslie.”
“I identify probably more so with Wesley because he is me at seventeen,” Roddenberry would say later. “He is the things I dreamed of being and doing.”11This closeness to the character would color how Wesley was handled, even after GR’s death (“Journey’s End”/289).
Actually, the issue of whether the teenager would be a boy or a girl was bandied about for some time. According to Justman, the character began as a male called Wesley—GR’s own middle name—even though he pushed to make the teenager a girl. The female character remained through the October 26 bible and the casting call, but had been changed back to the boy, Wesley, for good by the time the February 4 revision was completed.
“I thought, Jeez, anybody and everybody has had boy teenagers; let’s do a girl,” Justman recalled. “Let’s explore the problems that female adolescents go through, because that’s never done…. Then Gene switched it back to Wesley because he felt there would be a wider range of stories available dealing with the character if he were a male instead of a female.”
What might surprise those who later objected loud and long that Wesley was too young and inexperienced for bridge duty is the fact that their arguments had been foreseen. Despite the character’s brilliance, “The question will be raised as to why he was selected for this all-important mission rather than someone older who would have the maturity and experience which he has not, as yet, attained,” Justman wrote in a memo to GR way back on November 12. “Because of his youth, Wesley Crusher has not yet had to learn to go with the herd and compromise his thinking just because compromising is easier and more socially acceptable. He has the ability to grow with the job and to devise new approaches and new capabilities for whatever unforeseen events we encounter. In effect he is a one-man ‘think tank’ without pre-conditioned limitations.”
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 3