Sunday 14 March 2010

Designing the K’t’inga battle cruiser

Star Trek: The Motion Picture called for three Klingon battle cruisers, which had previously appeared in the original Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident”, designed by Matt Jefferies. “I designed the Klingon ship at home,” remembers Jefferies, “there was just too much going on at the studio from morning till night. Since the Klingons were the enemy, I had to design a ship that would be instantly recognizable as an enemy ship, especially for a flash cut. There had to be no way it could be mistaken for our guys. It had to look threatening, even vicious. So I modeled it on a manta ray, both shape and color, and that's why it looks as it does in the original series.”

The ship’s design was perfected by the twenty-fourth sketch on 20 November 1967. It was then sent to American Model Toy Corporation, “and they returned a master tooling model which we used in the show.&rdquol; The original model for the D7 was given to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “I’m assuming it’s still there,” says Jefferies, “along with the Enterprise,” of which the Smithsonian also maintains a model on display.

In 1996, a new model of the D7, IKS Gr’oth, was built by Greg Jein for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, “Trials and Tribble-ations”. While referenced, but not seen, in the original version of the episode, the model featured an amalgam of detail from both the original series model and the K’t’inga seen in The Motion Picture. The newer model bore a pale green coloration, in line with future Klingon vessels.

Yet another model of the Gr’oth, this time built entirely digitally, was created for the 2006 “remastered” version of numerous original episodes. In regard to this model, during those appearances, Michael Okuda noted that, “the Klingon ship was basically in two forms. In early episodes, when it was very small on the screen, it was the original version of the ship, which had essentially no surface detail. In “The Enterprise Incident,” “Elaan of Troyius,” and “Day of the Dove,” the ship was reworked somewhat to add surface texture. And, of course, in “The Enterprise Incident” we added the Romulan bird markings.”

Model

The model of the upgraded motion picture version, which would be called the K’t’inga, was built by Magicam and measured six feet in length. The most significant change in design was its more detailed surface, so that it looked more credible on the silver screen. The K’t’inga sequence shots for were shot under the supervision of John Dykstra.

In the words of The Motion Picture’s special photographic effects director, Douglas Trumbull, a Klingon battle cruiser should look like “an enemy submarine in World War II that’s been out at sea for too long”. Andrew Probert’s conceptualization of what lurked beneath the battle cruiser’s oddly shaped bridge helped set the Klingon style for all the Star Trek productions to follow.

These storyboards on dispaly here were published shortly before the release of The Motion Picture when still relatively little was known about the film’s storyline. They depict the movie’s opening sequence. Initially the scene would have featured the V’Ger probe bursting from the blackness of space, attacking the Klingon battle cruisers without any apparent provocation. Later it was decided the Klingons were to be the agressors, attacking V’Ger as it moved through Klingon territory toward Earth.

 

N. Ottens & T.C. Tobias
26 December 2005
Last updated: 28 October 2008

Sources for this article include:
• Solow, H.F. and Y. Fern, The Star Trek Sketchbook (1997)
• “D7 class,” Memory Alpha

Second and third image courtesy of Robert T. McCall, McCall Studios.
Fourth and fifth image courtesy of Andrew Probert, Probert Designs.