Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
Matalas had seen a design by Bill Krause that he wanted to rework and use as the exterior of the USS Titan. It was more of a retro-Captain Kirk era design. Terry liked the idea that much like how the new Dodge Charger looks like its vintage 1960s muscle car counterpart, but with updated tech. He wanted to do the same things but with a starship. As we were deep into creating District 6 and the new Titan sets, Terry hit me with three more surprises. First, we needed a new bad guy ship, the Shrike. Then, for the finale, we were going to bring back Picard's biggest enemy, the Borg, so we were going to need an updated Borg Cube, both inside and out—and finally, he said with a pause—we need to recreate the bridge of the USS Enterprise-D. For their final mission, the old crew of the Enterprise would be reunited and once again take the helm of the old ship to battle their oldest foe. First, we addressed the Shrike. I worked with concept artist Michael Meyers and Art Director Will Eliscu to transform the unused portion of the La Sirena ship into the bridge of a brand-new ship. I knew that the other two items on my plate carried far more weight, so this had to be quick and dirty. I chatted with cinematographer Crescenzo Notarile to get his thoughts on a bold lighting change with lots of smoke, shafts of light and some unique voronoi cucoloris panels to dramatically change the space. He loved it. Some crinkled metal window screen provided a bit of texture behind the voronoi to give the lighting guys more to play with. In many ways, it was our most impressive set, as it showed what you could do with very little. Kit Stølen headed up the Borg world, taking bits of Borg from season one and then adding three decades of Borg evolution to the design. We wanted it to feel like the Borg Queen had cobbled together parts from a dozen ships to build this one, and it would have designs from every iteration, but decayed. This was to be a dying cube. Eaves and Drexler once again collaborated on the Borg Cube exterior, creating a new, more menacing version of the iconic structure. Liz Kloczkowski spearheaded the Enterprise, starting by combing frame by frame through the TNG episodes, noting each thing that changed over the show's seven seasons. We settled on the season seven version of the bridge as it was the most recognizable. Doug Drexler happened to have an old partial set of blueprints that came in handy. Mike Okuda had scans of Art Department set A B C A. SHRIKE EXTERIOR. FINAL MODEL BY DOUG DREXLER. B. SHRIKE INTERIOR. SET PHOTO. C. BORG CUBE EXTERIOR. CONCEPT ART BY JOHN EAVES. D. BORG CUBE, QUEEN'S THRONE ROOM. CONCEPT ART BY JOHN EAVES. E. BORG CUBE INTERIOR. SET PHOTO. F. ENTERPRISE D BRIDGE. SET PHOTO. G. ENTERPRISE D BRIDGE. PRODUCTION STILL.