Form Follows Function.

"No flames, no fins, no rockets."

Instructions from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
to U.S.S. Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies

It's funny how fast a science fiction movie can lose me.  The Space Channel is showing Pandorum right now (a movie which lost a lot of people) which opens with a travelling shot down the length of a spaceship.  My first thought upon seeing this majestic craft travelling through the void was "What the hell are those three spikes for?  And why wouldn't those rings be continuous?  What possible reason would they have for not finishing the arc?  What is all this crap on the outside of the hull?"

Science fiction television and cinema is full of interesting and intriguing spaceships designed to fit into a specific milieu, such as the dictatorial wedges of Imperial Star Destroyers, the blunt military practicality of the battlestar Galactica, or the sensuous curves of Farscape's sentient organic starship Moya.

But out of all the spaceships and starships out there, I have a particular affection for the various iterations of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise, simply because of the logic behind the unique perspective that Matt Jefferies, the original designer, brought to the question of starship design.

Jefferies' Enterprise was based on his long experience as a designer and flight test engineer:

I decided that whatever we came up with had to be instantly recognisable, and to sell the speed it would probably have to start in the distance as a tiny speck of light, and enlarge and come right by your head or go the other way. In that couple of seconds you had to be able to recognise it.

The habitat part I felt ideally should be a ball, but it got too awkward to play with. It just didn’t look like it would get out of first gear, much less the speeds he (Roddenberry) was talking about. So it gradually got flattened. I was trying to stay away from a saucer because the UFOs or flying saucer were old hat but it did gradually turn it into a saucer.

I felt that if he was going to get this sort of fantastic performance out of the thing, there would have to be very powerful engines of some kind or other, even to the point they might be dangerous to be around. I said, "Well, we better get ’em away from the main hull." The other thing is what we called during war a Quick Change Unit. By having the engines out there, if anything is wrong, you can just quickly unhook it and put another in its place.

Similarly, the smooth outside finish of the ship was also based on logic and experience:

Basically I wanted to keep it as plain as I could. To be able to play light on it. I didn’t want to load the exterior up with what looked like equipment of some kind. We used to talk about Murphy’s Law, that whatever man makes will break at the most inopportune time. So why have equipment on the outside in the worst possible environment to put a crewman out to work on it, if you can keep it on the inside?

For myself, I've always assumed that the designs of the various Starfleet ships represented a response to the physics behind faster-than-light travel, as with the distinctive hulls of sailing ships and the carefully crafted curves of airplane wings.  I can't make any sort of similar connection for Pandorum's Elysium, which to my experienced eye just looks like a long stack of what the Star Wars set designers used to call "greebly dressing" rather than a reasoned design for a NAFAL* colony ship.  In fact, I have to wonder if the script said:  CAMERA PANS DOWN SHIP FOR 30 SECONDS, and they just kept adding bits to the model until it was long enough to fill that half-minute of the movie.

- Sid

* Not As Fast As Light - this useful but underused acronym comes to us courtesy of science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin.