USS Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual

Real world article

(written from a production point of view)

The USS Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual is a British reference book, published in October 2010 by Haynes Publishing in collaboration with Gallery Books for the USA. Written by Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley, with Michael Okuda as a technical consultant, the work covers various incarnations of the USS Enterprise in the style of Haynes' car manuals. The follow-up release was the Klingon Bird of Prey Owners' Workshop Manual.

Summary[]

From the publisher's catalog^(X): The Starship Enterprise gets the Haynes treatment! This fascinating Haynes Manual features cutaway drawings, technical illustrations and photographs along with comprehensive background information and specifications on the technology used on board the USS Enterprise, in all its various incarnations.

Seasoned Star Trek writers lift the lid on the most iconic spaceship of all time, while accuracy and authority are guaranteed by Technical Consultant Michael Okuda.

This is one book no Star Trek fan should be without.

Excerpts of copyrighted sources are included for review purposes only, without any intention of infringement.

Background information[]

A similarly-conceived book, tentatively titled Starship Enterprise, was proposed as early as 1999 to Pocket Books by would-be authors Mike and Denise Okuda, and would have featured artwork by Doug Drexler, Gary Kerr, and Petri Blomqvist. The proposition was nixed by Chief Editor Margaret Clark due to perceived lack of interest in the work. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 7, p. 61) Mike Okuda, though, was reacquainted with his abandoned project when he was asked to serve as a technical consultant for the Haynes publication, in order to ensure compliance with established canon.
Original press releases announcing the work tied it into the release of 2009's Star Trek, and suggested that it would present the USS Enterprise from that film. [1] However, the final release does not feature that ship in any great detail – Robinson noted that "[T]here will come a time for a manual that covers that Enterprise, but for now it's best for it to stay a mystery". [2]
Haynes itself had originally slated the title in their April 2010 Haynes July - December 2010 Catalog^(X) for a release in September that year, [3] though it experienced an one-month delay.
The full-color orthographic views of the various Enterprises were all renders of CGI models by Robert Bonchune, whereas the black and white cut-away drawings were all done by John Lawson, save for the ones of the USS Enterprise-A and the USS Enterprise-E. The latter was actually the template of Chris and Matt Cushman for their 1996 cut-away poster for Sci-Pub Tech and went uncredited. Chris Cushman ruefully commented, "The cutaway drawings for the Enterprise-D and even more so the Enterprise-E are lifts from our poster work. I would have loved to come on tonight to say that this was flattering, but I can't. Going to the back of the book you can clearly see that we are given no credit for our work! The lift of David Kimball's [sic.] STMP Enterprise is clearly credited but not the work of my brother and myself." [4] Cushman's concerns though, were addressed by the publisher with the 2012 US reprint edition, where credits were given – and which actually warranted an ISBN change. [5]
While rendered and lighted by Bonchune, justifying his illustrator credit and excepting the USS Enterprise-C, the CGI models were not actually constructed by him, but by CGI artists remaining otherwise unacknowledged. These included:
- Enterprise NX-01, constructed and mapped by Pierre Drolet at Eden FX for Star Trek: Enterprise and based on Doug Drexler's pre-production evaluation CGI model. (see: NX-class model)
- USS Enterprise, constructed by Koji Kuramura (but mapped, rendered and lighted by Bonchune) at Eden FX for ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly". (see: Constitution-class model (original))
- USS Enterprise-A, constructed and mapped by Bonchune and Lee Stringer at Foundation Imaging for Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD). (see: Constitution-class model (refit))
- USS Enterprise-B, a new model that had to be constructed, as no previous digital version existed yet for the refit-Excelsior-class, suitable for print publications. (see: Excelsior-class model) For this build Bonchune commissioned independent contractor Ed Giddings. [6] Bonchune was acquainted with the work of Giddings, as he had already built two highly detailed (replacement) models of Excelsior-class (derivative) variants for Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz' abandoned 2000 Unseen Frontier reference book project. Having been one of the two initiators of the project, Bonchune knew that Giddings was the perfect, logical choice for the build. Still, Giddings too has remained uncredited.
- USS Enterprise-D, constructed and mapped at Digital Muse for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and based on the CGI model built by John Knoll for Star Trek Generations. (See: Galaxy-class model)
- USS Enterprise-E, constructed and mapped by David Lombardi at Digital Muse as solicitation model for possible use in Star Trek: Insurrection. (See: Sovereign-class model)
Christian Humberg was the translator of the only known non-English edition, the July 2011 German-language Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise: Technisches Handbuch, published by Heel, like its two English-language counterparts executed as a hardback book without dust jacket.
In the UK a spin-off product was released by sub-licensee Demand Media Ltd. in November 2013 in the form of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, representing the cover illustration of the book with technical call-outs.