Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints

Get a look at the 1701-D from the inside out

• Star Trek: The Next Generation
  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints
• By Rick Sternbach
• Pocket Books
• $24.00/$32.00 Canada

ick Sternbach, one of the two original designer/illustrators for Star Trek: The Next Generation, has compiled 13 separate sheets of blueprints that map all 42 decks of the U.S.S. Enterprise-NCC-1701-D. Beginning with the surface of the saucer section and ending with the level that holds the antimatter injector, each successive sheet drills down through the details. The last sheet also boasts room and hardware symbol keys, cataloging everything from barber shops and VIP quarters to organic solids reprocessing units.

Aside from general room and function descriptions, Sternbach makes note of specific crew quarters -- Worf, Data and La Forge all bunk on Deck 2, while Riker, Troi and Picard put in sack time on Deck 8. By also taking note of the vast acreage devoted to the gymnasiums and renowned holodecks, readers can theorize about what the quality of the crew's daily life might be like.

While the actual blueprints are the substantive stuff, Sternbach also provides a brief guide to their development, with original series veteran Robert H. Justman writing the forward. The bulk of the guide is a dialog between Trek alumni Andy Probert, the other original designer/illustrator for The Next Generation; Herman Zimmerman, the season one production designer; Richard James, the production designer for the last six seasons; Dan Curry, the visual effects producer; Michael Okuda, the scenic art supervisor; Greg Jein, the model builder; Todd Guenther, a commercial artist; and Sternbach himself.

The professionalism and precision of these diagrams belie their work-in-progress origins, and readers can be tempted into believing that steely-flanked ships like these are indeed being soldered together above our atmosphere. Surprise, like the devil, is in the details. Readers might be taken aback to learn of, or be reminded of, the cetacean tanks and labs that span two deck levels.

The neatest thing going for the Next Generation blueprints is that they're really blueprints. Quite nifty indeed. But of course that is their biggest handicap as well. After 13 large fold-out sheets, the utter sameness of it all is a little stupefying. Better to peruse them in a series of sessions. Even so, it becomes quickly apparent that most of the ship is given over to anonymous rooms, and while this certainly makes sense functionally, it's not quite entertainment.

These blueprints are for the meticulously curious and those fans aching for Star Trek novelty. They're cool, but a bit much for the average Trekker. What would help this effort greatly would be some sort of index that identified points of interest and highlighted them on the blueprints: Stellar Cartography - Deck 8; the Jeffries tube where Picard and Neela Darin had music lessons - Deck 14; locations where Worf declares the House of Duras has no honor - Decks 4-37.

In summary, these blueprints are about as amiable as the nice chaps in AV class, and only a level or two more interesting. Regardless, this is the kind of project the teacher would have to reward with an A for sheer magnitude of effort. -- Tamara I.

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