It’s never easy to follow up on a legend, especially when you’ve had a hand in creating it. But that’s exactly the task Paramount recently gave to Dan Curry when he signed on as a visual effects producer on the new weekly TV series, “Enterprise.”
A fan of cult classics like “Things To Come,” “Forbidden Planet” and “War of the Worlds” — and a 1979 MFA graduate of Humboldt State University — Curry cut his visual effects teeth on Universal’s TV shows “Buck Rogers” and “Battlestar Galactica.” After working on 118 feature films, he was eventually hired as visual effects supervisor on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
The success of Curry’s work there — as the artist who helped influence the recasting of Klingons from “space Nazis” into the Samurai-style race portrayed by Worf, and who invented the crescent-shaped “batleth” in the process — has kept him in the Paramount fold. As a result, Dan Curry has produced visual effects for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “Star Trek: Voyager” and many of the “Star Trek movies.”
Yet, despite having spent decades working on the Enterprise — literally! — Curry says he feels like he’s working on his “first professional job out of school. In fact, everybody’s jazzed about working on ‘Enterprise.'”
This isn’t just hype. A look at any of the Enterprise episodes proves his point. In fact, the visual effects team of Curry, Ronald B. Moore, and Mitch Suskin has come up with a new look for the space warhorse that is both fresh and retro. This is critical, given that Enterprise is cast in the uneasy place of happening after our own time in reality, but before the “Star Trek” timeline of the original series that the fans are so familiar with.
Walking this tightrope is a challenge. On the one hand, “we owe the audience visual effects of a quality and calibre that they’re used to,” explains Curry. On the other hand, Paramount’s team must keep the “dating” of these effects right, so that they don’t seem out of place in the well-established Trek universe.
Designing The NX-01 Enterprise: Past Meets Future
Without a doubt, it’s the Enterprise itself that posed the biggest challenge for the art department headed by Herman Zimmerman and Doug Drexler, and Curry & Co. in visual effects.
The solution? “The Enterprise was aesthetically evolved backwards from the ‘later ships,’ just like the Chrysler PT Cruiser,” says Curry. “The PT Cruiser is basically a 1930s car, but it’s got all the modern technology of today, and carries a sense of modern design with it.”
Inside, the Enterprise is based on Herman Zimmerman’s visit to a nuclear submarine. That’s why “it feels like a place where people actually work and live, with handles to grab onto when the going gets rough,” he notes. The ‘first’ Enterprise is also more functional than its forebears. “We wanted something that fit what a pilot would want, because he’s the one who actually flies the ship.”
Outside, the Enterprise is “brushed metal with a hint of copper to it,” says Curry. Packaged in a thin, saucer-shaped craft that reminds one of the future Enterprises, viewers can easily deduce the chain of evolution here. The latest ship still stands out as a unique design statement.
So Where’s The Model?
There’s something else that’s very different about this Enterprise ship — quite simply, it doesn’t actually exist. Admittedly, Dan Curry does have a foam core mockup made by designer Doug Drexler which Curry flies around the office — Dan claims he only does this to map out the ship’s motion for storyboarding.
“We’re doing the show all CGI this time,” Curry explains. In other words, there are no detailed physical models of the NX-01, fated to hang in Planet Hollywood decades from now. (The Enterprise 1701-A can be found at the Las Vegas location, if you’re curious.)
Instead, the ship itself was digitally designed and mapped by Paramount’s art department. From there, the design was turned over to Curry, Moore, and Suskin. With the help of Foundation Imaging’s Rob Bonchune and Pierre Drolet, plus CGI software like Newtek’s LightWave 3D and Alias|Wavefront Maya (run on Alpha Workstations), they turned the Enterprise NX-01 into a living, moving reality. One that has yet to exist in true time and space.
Why is Enterprise exclusively relying on CGI when previous Star Trek productions have stuck with models? “We decided that we wanted to raise the reality quotient of the show, and have the freedom of design and motion afforded by CGI,” answers Curry.
However, there are two other reasons why Enterprise has wholeheartedly embraced CGI. One is the need to realize scripts on screen within budget, and on time. That was relatively easy in the days of Captain Picard, but as “Deep Space Nine” progressed, “the writers kept coming up with bigger and bigger shows,” Curry says. “There were programs where we had to show fleets of hundreds and hundreds of ships. This was physically impossible to photograph; besides, the improvements in digital animation meant that the quality concerns that had kept us with models were no longer a problem.”
The second reason is flexibility. “With models, there’s only so far you can rotate them before you see the mount,” explains Curry. “There’s also limits in how far you can move east/west in the shot, and how far they can travel across the track. With CGI, all these limits are gone: we have the complete freedom we need to do true filmmaking.”
It’s this freedom that Curry likes best about CGI. “It’s a lot like composing music,” he says. “It lets you create a feeling; a flow, a rhythm, and majesty to the visual sequences.”
Launching A Love Affair With Fans
To prove his point, Curry talks about the most-anticipated part of the Enterprise pilot: the launch of the new (or old) Enterprise from orbital drydock.
In a word, it was magnificent — visually slow and graceful, like a great ocean liner leaving a pier.
According to Curry, it was supposed to be. “This is the first time you get to see the Enterprise in total,” he explains. “My desire was that, by the time the ship comes fully into view, the audience has fallen in love with it.”
What really enhanced the launch sequence — and made it believable — were the details. The hoses pulling away from the Enterprise, Space Shuttle-style, as it moved away from the station. Two spacemen are working on the orbital platform, looking below as the massive Enterprise passes underneath.
The hoses were meant to link Enterprise to the NASA launches of our time; one that the viewers feel a sense of connection to. The spacemen outside were meant to offer a human scale of comparison, much as they did in the opening credits of Deep Space Nine. The end result, as anyone who has seen these and other Enterprise sequences will attest, is a profoundly believable piece of visual effects.
What’s Next For The NX-01
So far, “Enterprise” has truly gone where no TV franchise has gone before. That is, Paramount’s been able to dust off a concept that’s grown a bit long in the tooth, and give it a whole new lease on life. Without a doubt, much of the credit has to go to the artistry of the visual effects generated by Curry, Moore, and Suskin.
It also has to be attributed to their decision to go fully CGI. In today’s entertainment industry, where the public demands better effects and more of them, CGI has become a must. “However, it should be noted that technology is no substitute for artistry,” cautions Curry. “The requirements of storytelling, and the artistic vision of the filmmakers, still reigns supreme.”
So what happens next? “We’ll have to wait and see what the writers come up with,” laughs Curry. “No doubt they’ll find something even grander to challenge us with, even with all our technology.”
