Kubrick definitely ripped off Star Wars. Look what was in Watto's junkyard! He just cleaned it up a little and took it thirty years back in time.
Wasn't my desk; I wasn't on the production. The way it went down was more like when there were no NX designs that jumped out as being perfect, VFX producer Peter Lauritson suggested the Akira as a design that "hadn't been seen much," and that became the stylistic basis for the NX. - Rick
Ah, that makes more sense. The ironic thing is, I hate the proportions of the Akira but I like the NX-01. Yes, they're along similar lines, but they're as different as a hippo and a race horse.
Changing the orientation of the nacelles, pylons, and whatever that pod is in the middle really changes the whole ship's personality. It's silly to ascribe human emotions to a spaceship, but the Akira is sort of aggressive and unfriendly, while the NX is positive and uplifitng.
Oh wow dude, I didn't know you were here. This is awesome And if it wasn't you, then it was Doug Drexler. I knew it was one of you, I just forgot which :P The "Rick Berman threw the picture on my desk and said "make it look just like that"" story was Doug's To each their own. The Akira was one of my most favorite designs ever when I first saw it on the big screen in First Contact. So I was a little off-put to see the NX be so blatant, complete with how the stanchions connect to the saucer. I always imagined the first NX being something closer to the Daedalus, like the sphere was a Human design, but the saucer was something Starfleet adopted as a merging of design philosophies of all founding members. Some day, when I figure Blender out, I'll post the design for the Venture (NCC-101) as I felt the first starship should have a 100 registry, while those below would have been limited to Earth Patrol vessel types, not really built for more than Warp 2 I think that is the idea, as the Akira was meant to be one of the new escort classes to follow the Defiant, particularly as the Dominion threat was looming. Starfleet needed more battle-focused ship types, and not only does the Akira look aggressive, but have you taken a close look at its torpedo pod? The thing was built for Death Blossom, I swear.
Both NX-01 and Akira bear more than a passing resemblance (more-so NX01 than Akira) to this design which was first published in 1992: http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/perimeteraction_akyazi.jpg
And the FASA Locknar Class frigate predates that design by quite some yet: https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Loknar_class
We've all heard the story about how when Harve Bennett signed off on the plans for the Reliant model, he signed it upside-down, so that's why the ship was oriented the way it was. Makes you wonder if it would have been as menacing had they built it as originally designed? I'm thinking probably not.
Are there any shots of that concept model from below or the side? None of the photos there give a good sense of the ventral side.
There's some better views of it in this unboxing video (jump to 1:45; he spends the first minute or so looking through the booklet). Interestingly, there's no rollbar in this version; rather there's a torpedo launcher on the bottom of each nacelle pylon; similarly, the big phaser cannons aren't there either.
Oh, I quite like that. These Eaglemoss things are smaller than I thought. Not much bigger than the Micro Machines, if at all.
Judging by the size of that person's hands, I'd say they're considerably larger than the Micro Machines.
My MM Reliant's saucer is about as wide as 2 1/2 of my fingers, and the one in the video looks about 3 1/2 fingers wide. Maybe that person has bigger hands than mine, but mine are pretty average, I think. So that would make it about 40% bigger, give or take.
Oh no, they are significantly larger than the MM, I'd say twice the size. I'm literally in the middle of a move so they're in boxes, but I'll take some pictures of the two side by side whenever I can.
I've seen the Eaglemoss TOS Enterprise and also their Enterprise-D in person (the book + model sets you could find in bookstores; they also did one with the '66 Batmobile), and Rekkert is right, they're significantly larger than Micro Machines. The TOS ship was a bit smaller than the one in that old ERTL 3-ship model kit (with the D7 and Romulan Bird of Prey), while the Ent-D was roughly the size of the die-cast one that was part of Galoob's short-lived TNG toy line; maybe a smidge smaller.
Here they are all side by side, the Micro Machines Reliant, the regular Eaglemoss version and the XL version (r–l). Yeah, either Eaglemoss version is larger than the one from MM and has a significantly higher level of detail. Although I think it's still amazing how much detail they were able to include on those tiny MM models.