JOHN EAVES, ENTERPRISE ILLUSTRATOR
PAGE 1 OF 2There is nothing like going to a good sci-fi/modeling convention to let me catch up with one of the production crewmembers for Enterprise. And like two years ago*, it was at the WonderFest convention where John Eaves was a guest speaker. Again, I was given the opportunity to chat with him about his work, this time though, on both Star Trek: Nemesis and Enterprise.
One of John’s major contributions to Star Trek: Nemesis, although he considers them somewhat minor, were several redesigns he gave to the USS Enterprise. But let’s be honest here – any change to the Enterprise is a big deal. Luckily I was standing over a diagram of the Enterprise-E when I asked him about the changes.
“The biggest change was the sweep came back in, it was missing on the model – the sweep on the bottom of the belly, and so it has more of a curve on the model, it went flat and so this brought a little more curve to it.”
“This section … where the shuttlebay is for the saucer and the and the body had a flat cut so I extended the saucer into these tapers here which kind of brought the curve back in. And also on the side view of the miniature these were dropped where (the nacelles were) actually making contact – there was no air between the two, so it brought those out and pulled them forward a little bit to get the overall balance to the ship again.”
“And as far as weaponry go, right there we have a new single torpedo launcher,” he says as he points to the area just in front of the bridge. “We’ve got a double launcher … in the back of the back module, (another) single launcher (on the aft section), and we’ve got phaser strips on the top and the bottom of the struts.”
John also points out that the color has changed a bit on the saucer section. “It’s got darker rim detail” on several places on the saucer.
“I think that’s it with the modifications on it – they are very very subtle, and of course that was just personal finesse that I wanted to change on it. No one ever sees the profile stuff, but we get all information at work so until you go “oh, if only I could just sweeten those again” and Nemesis allowed that to happen.”
* First interviewed on the LCARSCom.Net
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