The Surprising Reason Star Trek Discovery Re-Used A Ship Design
Star Trek is a franchise that has often shamelessly re-used ships and sets whenever possible. As you might expect, the primary reason is to save as much money as possible while producing these expensive episodes. There is one notable exception, though: the Star Trek: Discovery episode “Context Is For Kings” re-uses the Discovery ship design and sets because the plot (involving another ship researching the spore drive) called for another Crossfield-class vessel.
The Tried-And-True Crossfield Design
In order to really appreciate how and why Star Trek re-used the Crossfield starship design, you need to know a bit more about the franchise re-using various vessel designs over the decades. In The Original Series, for example, the D7 Battlecruiser was introduced as a Klingon ship design before shamelessly being re-used as a Romulan vessel. Speaking of The Original Series, it’s not a coincidence that Kirk kept running into other Constitution-class ships: such plots allowed the show to re-use the Enterprise model as needed instead of designing something else entirely.
The same logic applies to interior sets as well: look closely at the Delta Flyer bridge in Voyager and you’ll notice that it’s actually the same bridge as the Defiant from Deep Space Nine. Parts of the Engineering set from The Next Generation were used (ironically enough) to create the Engineering room in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Regarding that film, if you take a closer look at the Federation president’s office, you’ll notice that it’s actually just the Ten Forward set from TNG.
Potential Use Of Shepard-Class Vessel
Long story not very short, Star Trek has a storied history of reusing ship exteriors and interiors, but that’s not why the Discovery’s Crossfield design was re-used in the episode “Context Is For Kings.” Originally, the producers wanted to introduce a new ship design in the form of the USS Curie. The ship was going to be a Shepard-class vessel (which admittedly has a pretty cool-looking design).
If It Ain’t Broke
However, before the Star Trek producers decided to re-use the Crossfield design, they had very ambitious plans for the Curie. Designer John Eaves created an entirely new kind of vessel for “Context Is For Kings” and went as far as creating both a physical CG model for the new ship. Eaves also worked extensively in Photoshop to create some cool damage to the ship’s exterior that was meant to illustrate a time warp gone wrong, but it turned out that all of his design efforts were in vain.
Practical Reasons For Tactical Redundancy
You see, as the “Context Is For Kings” script evolved, producers decided that the new vessel would be one that was damaged during an incident testing out the same kind of spore drive that the Discovery was working on. Because of that, the Star Trek writers simply made the new vessel another Crossfield-style design. Their logic was simple: if you have exactly two ships testing an experimental new propulsion system, then it would make sense that the vessels are physically identical.
Not Done For Budgetary Reasons
Thanks to John Eaves, we know that this Star Trek: Discovery episode is one of the only examples in franchise history where a re-used starship (in this case, the Crossfield exterior and interior) design was not done primarily to save money.
Still, the Paramount show eventually got their money’s worth out of the new design: look closely during the Battle of the Binary Stars and you’ll see Eaves’ Shepard-class vessels in action. That might give you something more palatable to think about whenever “Context Is For Kings” gives scenes of deformed corpses that channeled David Cronenberg long before he played a character on the show.
