USS Farrington: 2nd Pass WIP

Standard disclaimer: Starship U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010) and her backstory are the intellectual property of Ms. April Welles. I'm using them with her written permission. "Star Trek" was created by Gene Roddenberry and is currently owned by CBS Consumer Brands and Paramount Pictures.

Now that that's done, welcome back to the reimagination process of Ms. Welles' experimental heavy battlecruiser. The last time we left our favorite "Lady in White," she had gone through two design stages already:

(Freehand Study)
[link]

(First Pass)
[link]

Those were done in the summer of 2009, nearly three years ago. Back then, J.J. Abrams' interpretation of "Star Trek" had just come out and I had just decided that my fan-created Delta Universe was going to be in the J.J. Abrams universe - which meant that Farrington needed to be redesigned from the ground up.

I always wanted her to be a blend, somewhere between the canon lines of Captain Sulu's U.S.S. Excelsior (NCC-2000) as we saw her in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" and "Flashback (VGR)" and the curvy, "hot rodded," almost organic aesthetic that Ryan Church put into his redesigned U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) in the movie. "Excelsior" was already quite a curvy ship for a 23rd century Federation design, but she was still very blocky and a lot of the shapes that made her up really didn't "flow" into each other the way the Ryan Church aesthetic demands.

I tried to be careful not to change too much in the early design passes, besides completely redoing the warp engines and recreating Farrington's signature wormhole generator system as a giant half-ring with a central "gravitic field regulator pod," creating an all-new, distinctive look for the starship. I wanted her to stay recognizable as an Excelsior-class battlecruiser and drew heavily from the canon Excelsior and the Ingram-class space control ship (from fan material).

However, after completing a detailed port side elevation and bow-on front view, I began to find myself growing increasingly unsatisfied with that design. A close look would show that she was already a strong departure from the original Excelsior, but she still looked too blocky, too much like a collection of ill-fitting parts - the same flaws the original design had.

By 2012, I had become very familiar with the "Abrams" aesthetic. I'd also seen several other takes on the Excelsior design, from her 25th century successor, the Vesper-class cruiser of "Star Trek Online," to the Ascendence-class starship (by Don't Shoot) and several other "J.J. Abrams Excelsior" concepts that have already appeared on Deviant Art. Since it's currently Spring Break at Winthrop University, I decided that it was time to use these new influences to retouch my design.

This time, I didn't have my computer screen up while I was drawing and didn't have any existing blueprints or concept artwork set in front of me. I just had an empty desk, a blank sheet of paper, my memories and my imagination. While I was originally thinking of just freehanding a few shapes and seeing which ones I liked, after I put my ruler down to the paper, my sketching quickly became far more serious as shapes began to come together...

The result was something that kept the "spirit" of the new Farrington, but was otherwise totally different from anything I'd drawn before. Talk about a total makeover; she looks nothing like she did in my previous sketches. What we have here is a completed port side view, a "second pass" on the Lady in White. This one shows influences from:

1.) MadMan1701a's U.S.S. Venture Star (secondary hull outline)
2.) Ascendence class by Don't Shoot (saucer shape, large radiator fins & exposed deflector dish)
3.) Ryan Church Enterprise (nacelles, opening radiator fins & extended dorsal spine)
4.) Ingram class (enlarged shuttlecraft deck)
5.) Excelsior (overall appearance, torpedo tube placement).

I also designed new insignia and pennants for the ship, inspired by the "hollow" Delta shield insignia used by the crew of the U.S.S. Kelvin (NCC-0514) in the 2009 film. So far, I'm a bit displeased with the proportions on the warp nacelle support pylons and "bulb" - I think they came out too thin and spindly looking, even for Ryan Church-style struts. But other than making those proportionally larger, and shifting the dorsal superstructure forward a bit, I'm actually pretty satisfied with this look, but I'm still not sure about whether or not this will be Farrington's final design.

There is actually still plenty of space on this sheet of paper. I just moved my signature up in MS Paint to save space on the JPEG file. I hope I can revisit the drawing as soon as possible so that I can try adding a front view or maybe even a rear or top view. In the meantime, besides deck height (which was really iffy) the Farrington's stats have not changed from what I put down in the previous sketch:

[link]

Note: the U.S.S. Farrington's in-continuity nickname is "The Lady in White." Unlike most Federation ships built from the 2250's onwards in J.J. Abrams' universe, her hull is ivory-colored instead of a muted gull gray. This is because she's built from a specially made, white-colored duranium/ceramic composite material specifically designed for extra pressure resistance.

03/17/2012 Edit: I've changed a few details on the ship, and added a (poorly proportioned) front view attempt. The latest version of this drawing can be seen here: [link]