It's funny, this is such a fannish thing to write. And yet this is the longest I've written or talked about Star Trek in maybe two years.

So... I love the Starship Enterprise. Even after my day to day obsessive interest in Star Trek waned, I kept returning to drawing the Enterprise. There are very few designs from the last decade of science fiction film that have a legible enough silhouette that I could sit down with a post it and knock out thirty second sketch of any angle. But the Enterprise does something wonderful to my optic nerve.



When I had the oportunity to contribute to the Ships of the Line calendar in 2006, it was before the JJ Abrams project had even been announced. I had already been thinking, post Enterprise cancellation, that the only next logical thing to do with this franchise was to reboot it. When editor Doug Drexler asked me to do a page, I had already been noodling a "reimagined" classic Enterprise, a whimsical what-if. Now I had an excuse to get paid to finish it.

I interpreted the Enterprise the way my mind's eye has always seen her. All the shapes and character lines I added were sub-shapes my eyes felt complimented the primary shapes of the Enterprise in visual harmony and drew light and the eye to what I felt were her most vital focal points of interest.

I will be honest: I wasn't being a practical techie about the ship. I was doing it for aesthetics, a piece of art, from day one. I didn't care about things that incorporated compound curves that are needless in a space vehicle. On that same token, why did they choose to design the Chrysler building as anything other than a tall black rectangle? Because artistry is part of the human spirit, and if humanity's gonna represent, the artisans touch should be as prominant as science and engineering in a vessel in search of amazing discoveries and diplomatic relations with new species.



When the Abrams film was announced in the late spring of '06, I was curious to say the least if they would come to similar design conclusions. Not to say overt lifting of ideas, rather I found that "reimagining" the aesthetics of classic Star Trek led me in natural directions that I found to be inherent and inevitable for the design. It almost felt like it designed itself. I kept wondering if I was crazy or if my conclusions were indeed universal inevitabilities of reapproaching this ship. I wanted to see what Scott Chambliss' art department, specifically illustrator Ryan Church, would come up with.







Just for fun, I also did a more retro, smoother varriant on the ship that I plan to do some more stills with...



Then we got that first teaser in January, and I was pleased to see that, whatever the minute differences, the producers and their art department chose the same core philosophy I did: hip her up, add some new lines, sufficient detail to read on a big screen, but the core fundamental shapes and proportions of the Enterprise ain't broke and need no fixin'.





I noted right away that indeed, it seems like Ryan and I threw some similar ideas into the mix. We both added a similar stepped lip to the top of the saucer beneath the bridge. I could tell the engines had these bulging kinda teardrop shaped cowlings over them, and we both wanted to retain the classic spinning engine lights but give them an update.  I broke mine into 3 different layers of blades rotating clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise (and vice versa opposite side) at different speeds so the interplay of their intersection would look dynamic and cool and evocative of the classic nacelle caps all at the same time. The first teaser trailer shows very similar constructs on the new Enterprise.

The veil is off, and last month we got to see a full near-profile shot of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 in a summer movie called "Star Trek".

Since my ship has been all over the net for the last 2 years as the big rumored design, many have been curious about my reaction. Without much detail I've had a very hard year personally and been a bit reclusive.

But here's what made me want to get off my ass and write this.... It really, really, really means a lot to me that what I felt was just fan wank was deemed professional enough by many people to be a viable and believable enough to be the "real" Enterprise. Not everyone loved my treatment of her, but I have no gripe with that.

And with that, I'd like to say, PLEASE no one attack the artistic merrits or design abilities of Ryan Church if you do not favor his design.

I say this because as an artist in the industry, you are merely a conduit for producers' wishes. I'm sure if I had designed the movie Enterprise, and submitted what I did for Ships of the Line as a first pass, the producers would tell me to move this, lose that, add this here, make this fatter, this thinner, and by day's end, I'll have drawn something that satisfies the requirements of my job, but not neccesarily what would've been every single one of my own creative impulses.

At the end of the day, the Enterprise in the film represents WHAT ABRAMS AND HIS PRODUCERS wanted, as translated by an artist hired to interface with their brains.

That's the big difference between judging my ship and his. Mine was a one-stop-shop approval process. Everything you like or dislike falls right under my name. For all I know, Ryan got very little resistance and they let his vision through relatively free of input. But for all I know he was micromanaged to the point that he had to mishmash 10 people's notes into a design and very little of himself was in it when he was done. Or something in the middle. We don't know.

But to me it sucks when someone comes down on this new ship and we don't even know how closely it represents the designer's own taste. I also don't think he's obligated to have to answer that. Its a rough business, politics get played, and its his own personal beeswax what went on during one of his jobs.

So here's the ship...

This is a really, really, really hard one to critique. I really wanted to be involved with this movie. I really wanted to make my presence more aggressively known, and somewhere deep down I wonder if I wasn't on that film, either in a visual effects capacity at ILM or in an art department capacity, because I let 2 years of a deteriorating marriage put me off the map.

This IS the new Star Trek. I'm proud of all the work in the industry I've done over the years that has given me a voice to admirers in the world of fandom, and if I'd pushed harder, I had the resume to lend something to this film. I feel like I missed the party.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that the film is any less for my not having contributed. Every time I watch that trailer, that fan kid I miss springs back to life. So that means they put a great team of creatives together who really love what they're doing.

Perhaps like McCain and the presidency, I had a dream that I would create the next Starship Enterprise. It meant so much to me.

There are things about this ship that I like. I like how clean it is, how uncluttered by greebles and decals while still retaining scale. If anything it adds to the scale. I like that it got away from the VERY RED bussards VERY BLUE BLUE STUFF of TNG era ships (and NX-01). I like the blades on the engin

As old a copout as this is, its not what I would've done. And I feel like less of a butthole critic because I've already executed and exhibited what I woulda done. It was my taste. It wasn't everyone's.

I'd like to see more angles of this ship shot with a longer lens. The lens in that shot is so wide I think its caricaturing the proportions a bit. Look at that angle of it in construction in the trailer for what I think represent the ship's actual proportions better. Its been stated that image pays homage to the Enterprise launch sequence from the first feature film, and I can tell that whoever did that render of the Enterprise was going for that super wide Doug Trumbull snorkel lens look of that sequence.

It's a bit of a pastiche. I like the shapes of the individual componants: The turbine-esque nacelles, the reinforced neck, and the neuvo-TMP saucer. But the engines and the saucer look a bit foreign from one another. I like the deflector dish. Its a cleaver way to both be a detached dish with a spike, and pay homage to the TMP blue glowing dish as well.

It's very front heavy. I see the rationale of putting the mass of the engine hull that much further forward. Ryan pushed the neck back and has it sweep back much further, and by taking the engine hull and squeezing it like a half full tube of toothpaste to put all the weight up front, he's admittedly got a balance between engine hull and neck that's a lot sturdier than the classic in its distribution of mass. I just don't find that balance as aesthetically pleasing. I'm not big on how the struts taper in at the top and that they mount almost at the very front of the engines. And with so much up front, the engine hull has a long skinny tail that makes the engines seem like they're overwhelming the struts.

If I sound like I am being hard on this design, don't worry, I know its all just a TV show and I don't invest any actual emotion in criticising an entertainment franchise's creative choices.

I am sure I will come to like this ship more the more I see it. Ryan Church is a talented guy with a longer resume than me, and I think this is a design that when us noisy fans settle, will win over the old and gain some new fans.

And I'll be buying and building a modelkit of it too. This'll sit on my desk. It's the Enterprise. They didn't turn it into a giant flying black stealth bomber with two chainsaws for nacelles and a distinctive chicken beak. It's got a saucer, two nacelles, a secondary hull, and a neck. The fact that producers didn't force an artist to screw that up warrants praise in this town. And its got some interesting shapes. It'll work for the target audience. Congratulations, Ryan Church. The Enterprise is your girl. I'm sure you've found it as much a blessing as a curse, the consequences of putting your stamp on something Star Trek fans hold sacred. You should see some of the email I'VE gotten, and my ship ain't even for reals!

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And Im so bored I had to model it for you... mind you, we had to pay for this stuff, and my order alone topped the movies box office. :) And oh yeah.. Ive uhh, got 2 ladies smalls Im not sure what to do with now...

This particular man was known as the Trek man on campus... I've known teachers like this, never from having had a positive classroom experience with them but by meeting them through fandom circles. I regretted never being under the academic wing of a man like this.

The world has one less Cho in it. Too bad it had to cost 33 that deserved to stick around.

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- He was the professor who loved debating an equation with his students for hours. A civil and environmental engineer regarded as brilliant, his humility defined him. He once told his wife, "There are people who are better than me," as he tucked his prestigious awards inside his closet.

While most students could find him in his office, working past midnight, unraveling the puzzles of how water travels around the globe, he understood that the mind needed rest. In those moments, he stole away to watch one of his favorite "Star Trek" movies.

The friends, students and family of G.V. Loganathan, 51, want the world to know he was more than just one among the 32 killed during a rampage at Virginia Tech. Right until the moment when Cho Seung-Hui burst through Loganathan's classroom door, the professor was spending extra time tutoring a struggling graduate student.

"He cared about his students as if they were his own children, fretting about their grades, making sure they understood the concepts," said Loganathan's wife, Usha, her voice breaking. "To the last minute, he loved teaching."

As the carnage at Virginia Tech played out on television on Monday, the couple's eldest daughter Uma, 21, watched the news.

"I told her what was happening as I knew it myself," Usha said.

But of the couple's 13-year-old daughter Abhi, "I didn't know how to tell her.

"How do you do such a thing? How can you explain this?"

Kaelie Altizer, a neighborhood friend, said Abhi "was really sad" when she found out about her father's death Monday.

Calming influence

One of Loganathan's former students, Ken Ying of North Carolina, heard the news of the shooting Monday while he was working on a project in Florida.

An accomplished engineer, Ying always kept his former professor in mind when he was out in the field tackling a challenging job.

He was a Ph.D. student in the early 1980s and Loganathan had just started his Virginia Tech career as an assistant professor when the two became close, spending hours going over engineering puzzles together.

"The thing that was amazing to me is that you could debate [and] argue with him all day and night and you [could] never get him angry, not at all," Ying said. "He just gave you a calm feeling."

In the world of academic engineering, proving another engineer wrong while not offending them or losing your cool when they identify your missteps is a rare talent.

Nicholas Young, an environmental engineering student, said Loganathan would exaggerate his thick Indian accent for a laugh. "Some of the subjects could be boring," the 22-year-old said. "And he was trying to get us to have fun."

Young replaced his Facebook picture with a picture of his professor. "I will miss him a lot. Everybody is going to miss him."

When Ying heard about Loganathan's death, he remembered what his friend usually said in the middle of a heated hydrology debate.

"He would say, 'Don't worry about the mistakes you make. It's all right. Things can be corrected,' " Ying said.

And in the mid-1980s, when his eldest daughter was born, Loganathan seemed to take his own advice.

"We -- myself and another student -- went up to him after his daughter was born and asked him what it was like to be a father," Ying recalled. "He just paused and didn't say anything. I think he was thinking of an answer."

From that day on, they noticed Loganathan stopped spending all his free time in his office.

"He was spending time with his wife and daughter," Ying said.

'He was brilliant'

Usha Loganathan met her husband for the first time during their wedding. The arranged marriage happened near his hometown in the southern Indian city of Chennai. He was quiet with her at first.

"But he was brilliant," she said. "I could tell right away."

She lived with his parents for a year in India after the wedding because she could not obtain a visa to join him in Virginia. Nothing, not even a new bride, would have stopped him from coming to the United States. He dreamed about becoming an engineer when he was a boy, she said. "All his friends went to college to be engineers, too."

The year of separation was the newlyweds' "dating period," Usha Loganathan said.

"He was very romantic, very nice."

"He used to write letters and call me every morning. He would just spend a lot of money on phone calls. That's how we tried to learn about each other."

She could tell he was "good" because he spoke so sincerely about his passion for engineering. And when she joined him in Blacksburg, she learned of his profound humility.

"He didn't want people to see his awards," she said. "He would put them in the closet. He would say they are just paper."

Over the past two days, she has not taken them out to look at the awards.

Not yet. She isn't ready. She has not had time.

Her in-laws are due to arrive in Virginia soon from India. And her husband's students have been calling and dropping by her home to say how much they adored him, how much they learned.

One student who wrote on a campus memorial wished he had expressed this thought to his professor much sooner.

"I regret not telling you that you were the best teacher I ever had," it read. "You were an inspiration."

So I went on an interesting Drunk and Stoned Internet Adventure[TM]. (the Internet is the second thing behind a barfight with a professional kickboxer to avoid when intoxicated)...

Bakersfield was an odd place: The little agricultural red state 2 hours north of LA. I have my wife and my core 3 or 4 lifelong friends from there that I keep in touch with from there, but I periodically thought about all those "What ever happened to that guy / gal?" acquaintances that I grew up with in the 90's.

So I pop in Bakersfield's zip code in the Myspace search... within a few minutes I randomly come accross ALL sorts of names I recognize, from little league, those crazy evangelical churches, and elsewhere.

So I'm curious to see who's receptive to me saying hey and who is not. See, back then I was very much more like my 14 year old "Trekkies" self (the era before THC), anxious, obsessive, hopelessly nerdy, fickle, and not quite socially fine tuned. Was big into Trek. BIG into Trek. BIIIIGGGG into Trek then. Some accepted that and some did not, I'd sometimes make friends and drive them away quickly with eccentricity.

Bakersfield is also a very different culture having come from Connecticut. Back there, I got picked on because money, family breeding, and your future education prospects matter in elitist New England and I was a poor swamp yankee. So I tried my best to lay on the appearance of as much intellect and upbringing as I could muster to ingratiate myself there.

In Bakersfield, if you're not a right wing machismo jock shitkicker fitting into very narrow confines, or if you're not a gangbanger sort (even the white guys do it, its adorable), you're fucked. Its the kind of place that breeds contempt for those who are not predisposed to fitting in. The routine I was trying back east made things even worse there, totally different culture, and a 10 year old is too young to get the nuances. Hard to fit in when you're not even sure who to fit in WITH...

So I drafted a form letter, just sayin hi, knew you ages ago via X, how are ya, I'm married, been doing this and this and this... etc. I ended up mailing about 20 folks... many were happy to hear and I'm happy to have regained contact. Some didn't write back, one was hostile in ways that remind me very specifically of that town's culture, that I felt worth exploring. Its a blanked of inbred ignorance, lack of tolerance for anyone outside their box, and general culture of biggoted, macho posturing idiocy.

Here's the standout, mailed my form letter to a gal named Arianna Rogers... met her when I was like 11 or 12, mutual pal of my best bud down the street, knew 1 or 2 others mutually, she liked TNG, hung for a bit (even took her to a convention), but she decided I wasn't really her thang and went her own way.

So I get back a snyde message that I'm posturing for acceptance and to leave her alone. Figured that's pretty dramatic for a hi but okay. :)

Then I get sent a link to a friggin BLOG entry! Here's the gem:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=52764203&blogID=211828813&MyToken=98ceda39-2e66-4672-805b-b86e3ee93f67

"Fucking Dork Get a Life!

"Fucking trekking loving closet homo sick ass freak!
    Does your wife know youre still obsessed with a girl who rejected your dorky ass twelve years ago? Does she know you fucked another guy? Your best friend at that!
your the high school dork coming back to the reunion trying to impress your tormentors with your success,accolades emmy nominated bullshit,begging for the acceptance of the people who rejected you all those years ago. God your lame"

I should be thrilled to drive a reaction like THAT out of somebody I've not thought about in a decade!

A command of the english language every bit as impressive as the president's. :)

See, that sheds light on another very specific thing about Bakersfield: Its very homophobic, so if the small town rumor mill wants to discredit you, the WORST POSSIBLE THING that one can POSSIBLY BE is gay. The text above is something commonly bandied about. I disagree with liberals on some fiscal matters but one nice thing about LA is that no one cares about something so inconsequential. There are times I'm asked about my sexual preference, and I do not find it emasculating or offensive at all if someone thinks I might be different than I am.

But isn't it funny to peek into a culture where that's just some horrible, character crushing thing that is intended to be genuinely insulting to someone? I have no reaction to it.

So now apparently I've got to tell my wife I'm 'obsessed' with an acquaintance from 12-13 years ago, and also considering that Allie IS my best friend, its distressing to learn that she's a guy.

So Arianna Rogers, you get the Idiot of the Day award for being a shining example of backwards Bakersfield, California culture. No better, no worse, archetypal. Hey, at least its an award and not just a nomination. :)