NX class model While the series of was being conceived , the appearance of the was being thought up . Because the " hero " vessel for the new " Star Trek " television series was designed as an NX - class vessel , the ship class was meanwhile foremost on the minds of the creative team . Shortly before the series began airing , co - creator and Executive Producer Rick Berman related , " " These are all things we have had to give serious thought to – the look of the ship , the look of the corridors , the transporter room , the ready room , etc . " " ( ) Thus , what turned out to be an arduous process to define the look of the NX - class began . Design . As the new series was supposed to be a precursor of , all designs to be featured had to reflect this , including the configuration of the " hero " ship that was to be featured in the new series , . Inception . Along with Brannon Braga ( the series ' other co - creator ) , Rick Berman decided they would like the NX - class to look appealing and convincingly retro . " " At the same time , " " he noted , " " we had to marry a little bit of contemporary technology with what we know is going to be coming and take some poetic license and come up with a ship that is certainly a step backwards in technology from the ships we ' ve been used to . " " ( ) Braga commented on the prospect of making the NX - class seem " like something out of 1950s science fiction , " stating , " " I just don ' t think 99 percent of the audience would have bought it . So you need to take some license and say , ' We ' re going to make it look like a ship that would be a hundred years more advanced than something today [ . . . ] ' rather than say , ' We ' re going to make it look like something that ' s a hundred years before a show that was done in the 1960s . ' That ' s definitely a creative license that we took . But I think those kind of things are necessary . " " ( ) While admittedly making it seem slightly more advanced than the original " Star Trek " from the 1960s , the producers still wanted to have the NX - class be similar to that ship as well as other earlier - depicted vessels . Production illustrator Doug Drexler offered , " " Rick and Brannon wished to borrow from the original " Enterprise " , the motion picture " Enterprise " and some elements from other ships in the movie series . " " ( ) Berman himself clarified , " " We spent a lot of time studying the " Enterprise " from the and then the " Enterprise " from , and then the subsequent ships and a variety of other vessels . We wanted something that was reminiscent ; we wanted something that people could believe would , 90 years later , evolve into Kirk ' s " Enterprise " , but obviously we wanted to make the ship with the same degree of sophistication that computer modeling can do today , as opposed to the way wooden modeling was done in the 1960 ' s . " " ( ) Rick Berman ' s marching orders for Production Designer Herman Zimmerman to begin considering how the NX - class " Enterprise " would look included advice that the " new " ship should be " " both retro and cool at the same time , gritty and utilitarian with space - efficient interior and hands - on equipment . A ship which shows the audience a lot more nuts and bolts than other " Star Trek " series while still having an incredibly futuristic look . In a subtle , very recognizable way , the ship must foreshadow the design of " Enterprise " s to come . " " ( " Broken Bow " , paperback ed . , p . 259 ) In the script for , the NX - class is introduced with the description , " " More rocketship than starship , " Enterprise " is lean and masculine – yet its deflector dish and twin warp nacelles suggest the shape of Starfleet vessels to come . " " ( " Broken Bow " , paperback ed . , p . 262 ) However , this statement was later revised to remove the references to both the deflector dish and the class appearing more akin to a rocket ship than a starship . In the revised final draft script of " Broken Bow " , the class was additionally referred to as " great " and " majestic . " Initial designs . Herman Zimmerman once commented that the terms " retro and cool " were " two buzzwords very easy to slip off the tongue , but not so easy to conceive on paper and then in the reality of the scenery onstage . " ( ) To assist with the concept work , he brought illustrator John Eaves onto the project . " " Herman called me really early on , " " remembered Eaves , " " and said we needed a retro " Enterprise " , somewhere between the " Phoenix " and Captain Kirk ' s ship , and he needed sketches for it . " " ( ) Despite the numerous influential starting - points already discussed , Zimmerman gave Eaves free reign to experiment with virtually every design concept he could think of . " " Orders were to try everything under the sun and don ’ t go for the obvious , " " Eaves admitted . An initial conceptual image John Eaves sketched took its direction straight from Herman Zimmerman . Explained Eaves , " " He had found a shape he liked in one of Syd Meads ’ many books and thus had me translate the shape into a starship [ . . . ] I was so glad that after he saw it on paper he changed his mind and we started to pursue a more traditional starship look . " " Another early concept for the exterior of the class took its cue from Brannon Braga having recently noticed , at a Los Angeles car show , how the then - new 2002 of modernized a classic design that he was very familiar with . Braga remembered , " " We discussed it and we thought , Well , let ' s take Kirk ' s ship , the original " Enterprise " , and let ' s soup it up and make it more futuristic and bring it into the twenty - first century . And we worked on that for a while , but it ultimately looked just too much like the other ships . " " ( " Broken Bow " , paperback ed . , pp . 262 - 263 ) According to Herman Zimmerman , this version of the class especially " looked very similar to the original motion picture " Enterprise " . " ( ) Due to this approach making the class appear insufficiently new , the team entirely abandoned it and opted to start from scratch . " " That was a really cool ship and the series would have been well served by it , " " Zimmerman evaluated . " " But , I don ' t think it represented what Rick and Brannon see as the vision of this new " Enterprise " . So we went to work again . " " ( " Broken Bow " , paperback ed . , p . 263 ) Ultimately , John Eaves invested much time and effort in trying to design the exterior of the NX - class . " " Many many versions came and went and all were getting the boot with little to no direction on what they wanted to see from the producers end , " " Eaves observed . " " By now , time was getting critical . " " He said further , " " I did lots of sketches , and they ' d go too far " Phoenix " or too far [ Kirk ' s ] " Enterprise " , and it wasn ' t really what Mr . Berman wanted to see . He shot down almost all of the drawings and in his mind there was something he really wanted to see that was going to be different but he couldn ' t really put it into words , so Herman would take what he would say and translate it to me and I ' d work on it . " " ( ) Zimmerman himself remarked , " " We went to several different styles of combinations of nacelles and saucers and engineering sections and airframes . " " ( ) He also stated , " " We had about a month of sketches and computer - generated images roughly showing shapes of different ships that eventually evolved . " " ( " Broken Bow " , paperback ed . , p . 263 ) The final concept sketch that John Eaves created for the NX - class while working under Zimmerman ' s aegis looked far more like a typical " Star Trek " starship than Eaves ' initial sketch had . " " It was a fun piece just to [ do ] for concept sake , " " explained Eaves . His successor ( and personal friend ) , Doug Drexler , has added , " " Before I came on board , Johnny Eaves drew 30 - 40 different NX ships that were all cool , and all rejected . They exhausted him . " " Change of designer . Eager to collaborate on the new series , Doug Drexler was able to start participating in the design process for the NX - class about a month after it began . " " When I was brought onto the " Enterprise " design project it had literally reverted to square one , " " Drexler expressed . " " Most of John and Herman ' s time up until that point was spent exploring very different ideas that harkened more toward rocket ships and submarines . Rick and Brannon had dutifully explored the possibilities of an entirely different direction but , and I think most wisely , decided that they were loosing something by abandoning the traditional starship configuration [ . . . ] At this point it was time for Herman to move John on to conceptualizing the new starship sets . I think Mike Okuda suggested to Herman that he might give me a call , thinking that a CGI approach to conceptualizing the ship might help break the stalemate . " " Thus , the fact that Drexler had been learning how to build CGI model s while working on at visual effects house Foundation Imaging was instrumental in his invitation to participate in the design process for the NX - class . ( ) With the overall look of the NX - class having been somewhat decided upon via a process of elimination , Doug Drexler was tasked with working out the finer points of the class . " " Rick [ Berman ] and Brannon [ Braga ] had a pretty good idea of what they were looking for , " " he remembered . " " The devil was in the details . Our job was to take familiar geometry and restyle it . " " ( ) After receiving advice on how to proceed with the design , Doug Drexler went directly to 3d modeling of the class , preferring to model the ship digitally instead of continuing with concept drawings . He believed that working in CGI was a massive benefit to the development process , easily enabling dramatic alterations to the craft ' s dimensions and for the art department to show the vessel to the producers from every angle and lighting condition . However , Drexler started designing the prototype CG model of the NX - class while under the erroneous impression that it would just be a quick mock - up , only to discover the truth as he continued to refine the model . ( ) Starting with the familiar basic elements of a Starfleet vessel – to wit , a primary hull saucer section , a secondary hull engineering section , and two warp nacelle s – Drexler started to experiment with the configuration of these elements , much like original " Enterprise " designer Matt Jefferies had done . Starting with a configuration that very much resembled the classic starship , Drexler even considered a three - engined configuration , knowing full well that this went against Gene Roddenberry ' s dictum about odd - numbered warp engines on a starship . ( Bandai model kit no . 122721 , " Instruction booklet " , p . 8 ) Roddenberry had , off the record , stipulated that starships had warp engines that operated in tandem , something that other long - time " Star Trek " production staffers , like Andrew Probert and Michael Okuda , were quite familiar with . " " The first thing we did was play around with a model of the original ship that I had in stock . Before investing tons of time on restyling , we wanted to look at various configurations . None of these were meant as final designs , " " Drexler clarified . Doug Drexler committed to work on developing the NX - class , on the side . " " I was working at Foundation during the day and thrashing out various designs at night , " " Drexler related . " " I was doing some late nights . Herman would drop by the house two evenings a week and we would go over our leaders ' reactions and make various adjustments : shorten the nacelle , raise the bottom of the saucer , more metallic , etc . " " ( ) Michael Okuda pointed out , " " It should also be noted that Doug worked a LOT of unpaid hours during the design of the NX - 01 , because he took this job very , very seriously . He started meeting with production designer Herman Zimmerman several weeks before he was officially hired . Doug , who was already working a full - time job during this period , stayed up late every night to work at home on the ship . This went on for weeks , with Doug busting his hump to capture Herman ' s vision and our producers ' wishes , melding them with his own sense of starship heritage . By the time Doug was actually on payroll , he and Herman had already gone through several design cycles , buying precious time to refine the ship during the inevitable last - minute frenzy of deadline . " " Drexler , in turn , considers Okuda to have had considerable influence on the development of the class . " " Mike Okuda and I really did spend a lot of time thrashing things out , " " Drexler mused . " " I think Mike probably had more input into this starship than any other , due to our close friendship . " " John Eaves was thrilled to witness Doug Drexler enthusiastically evolve the appearance of the NX - class . ( ) Eaves commented , " " His work was very impressive and filling the voids of time and history with great ease [ . . . ] Sadly none of his beauties were getting anywhere either . " " Eaves also called Drexler ' s initial designs for the NX - class " perfect " and enthused , " " His designs were exactly retro enough to not only compliment the [ " Original Series " ] version but made a great Starship for its century . " " Final exterior design . The producers finally determined that they wanted the NX - class to be of essentially a single hull , incapable of saucer separation . Herman Zimmerman commented , " " It took us a good three months of trial and error before we arrived at the shape we now have [ . . . ] We decided to eliminate the engineering section as a separate entity and make it part of the hull . Brannon and Rick decided they didn ' t want a ship that would separate ; that would be something that would happen some time in the future . " " ( ) The eventual twin - boomed shape of the NX - class was partly influenced by the , an aviation source of inspiration that Doug Drexler pointed the design toward . John Eaves offered , " " It was a great idea , I thought , to go with that P - 38 look . Doug ' s first passes on that were just dead on , and exactly the shape it needed to be . He kept working on that for months and he did an awesome job . " " ( ) Given the concern that the NX - class not look so different from the typical starship layout as to seem out of place , the final design concept for the class was also heavily influenced by the look of a certain previously established starship class , though that backfired on an earlier design configuration Drexler was homing in on . " " We had a basic configuration for another ship that was very close to the 1701 , although still too futuristic to my mind , " " Drexler recalled . " " Apparently someone walked into Mr . Berman ’ s office and said , ' Cool ! It looks just like Kirk ' s ship ! ' , and that was the end of that . That was a real beating . ' Use the Akira ! ' came the order . They really thought no one would notice . " " In effect , the producers at first wanted to reuse the without any changes , " lock stock and barrel " according to a horrified Drexler . When informed of this decision , he and other members of the art department chose to oppose the imperative . Herman Zimmerman subsequently commented , " " We found a ship " [ the ] " that was in our archives – a minor vessel that had been used in a battle in that had been created by ILM . We did not use that ship , but we took ideas from it and from those ideas eventually – and this process took about four months , all week and weekend CGI work by [ . . . ] Doug Drexler – we finally came up with [ the eventual ] shape . " " ( " Behind the Scenes of " Enterprise " " ) To differentiate the NX - class from the " Akira " - class , the art department demanded that it meanwhile resemble the original . Drexler specified , " " Our mission was to get it more towards the TOS ship [ . . . ] I always saw the task as not designing a new ship , but rather a ' restyling ' job . I drew my inspiration from the great industrial designer [ " sic " ] who took the turn of the century steam locomotive and restyled it into the streamliner . " " Drexler also characterized his agenda of injecting as many small facets from the original series design into the NX - class as he could to have been his " main mission . " He also recalled , " " It was thanks to Herman that we got a blessing on going ahead with the restyle . He fought for it . " " Once the plan of paying homage to the TOS " Enterprise " via the NX - class was approved , Doug Drexler was pleased to move the design in that direction . " " I made sure that the basic dynamic between the saucer and the nacelles was the same , " " he declared . Other aspects that echoed the original " Star Trek " ship included the placement of the join between the warp nacelles and the nacelle pylons , the shape of the saucer impulse cones at either side of the saucer section ' s aft , and the lower sensor dome on the bottom of the saucer section ' s midpoint . Drexler also horizontally squeezed the TOS " Enterprise " s deflector dish , moving it to the front of the saucer , and reused the idea of the ship having an airport - style control tower dome towards the aft , building such a dome into both the underside and upper side of the saucer section , rather than the singular dome that is atop the " Constitution " - class ' secondary hull . He additionally kept spheres at the back of the nacelles , also slightly changing them by dividing both spheres in two . " " If the fronts of the nacelles look like penises , I compounded that by making the ends of the NX nacelles look like a girls butt in a thong , " " he noted . " " I thought that was fair . " " Doug Drexler wanted to make a couple of elements more clearly influenced by the TOS " Enterprise " than they ultimately were allowed to be ; he was interested in making the nacelle pylons decidedly thin , which ultimately motivated him to highlight a thin portion of both pylons ' leading edge , and the Bussard collector s more orange but volatile - looking than they wound up . At first , the blue glow on the warp nacelles was resisted by the art department . However , they came to think of it as " fulfilling an original dream , " as Gene Roddenberry had intended for a similar glow to be featured on the TOS " Enterprise " , a wish that had been too expensive to realize for that vessel . The minute detailing done to the NX - class included the paneling on its hull . " " Like Andy [ Probert ] ' s ' D ' , every panel was designed and fitted painstakingly to the function and form of the ship , " " Doug Drexler explained . " " All sections have their own distinct personality and are not simply cloned and repeated . " " Doug Drexler ' s development of the first CG model of the NX - class was during an abundance of disputes between the art department and the producers , concerning how the ship should look . " " Nearly every single detail was haggled over , " " Drexler recounted . " " Color , texture , plating . . . you name it [ . . . ] The dome on the bridge was lit up originally . The producers thought the audience would mistake that for windows . I wanted a more porcelain , smooth finish . The producers wanted plating more like the TMP ship . I wanted lighter pylons , the producers wanted heavy pylons . " " Eventually happy with the extent to which he affected the design , Drexler didn ' t take long to digitally map the surface details for the NX - class . While Drexler was proud of his creation , he once admitted , " " It was a frustrating experience . I ' m a ' canon ' kind of guy . I would have liked to have seen the " Daedalus " style ship . You know . . . the sphere instead of saucer . The producers wanted it to be a saucer because they wanted it ' recognizable ' . " " Despite Doug Drexler ' s frustration with the design process , Geoffrey Mandel has noted , " " Having been around then , I also know that Doug Drexler and John Eaves did EXACTLY what the producers asked them to : Rick and Braga had very strong opinions , and knew exactly what they wanted . There was an earlier version of the NX - 01 with a secondary hull and dorsal fin , but the general feeling was that it looked too much like the TOS " Enterprise . " Nevertheless , Drexler ' s dogged determination to bring the project to successful fruition also solicited an accolade of high praise from Michael Okuda , who stated , " " That ’ s dedication , but that ' s what Doug brings to every project . And it earned him a place among such luminaries as Jefferies , Probert , Sternbach , Eaves , Taylor , Zimmerman , and James . " " Coda . In total , the process of designing the NX - class took almost a year . ( ) Nevertheless , when fans were presented with " Enterprise " NX - 01 for the first time , they still were struck with how much the exterior design of the NX - class resembles the " Akira " - class , and for a time , the new ship was – in certain fan circles – endowed with the somewhat derogative sobriquet " Akiraprise " . After his tenure on " Star Trek " , Doug Drexler went on to work on Ronald D . Moore ' s revamped " Battlestar Galactica " franchise , in which the Cylon theologians , that franchise ' s antagonists , frequently quoted their adage , " What has happened before , will happen again " . As it turned out , this adage was applicable to the design Drexler had created , and the producers had signed off on , as well . A strikingly similar " Enterprise " design had already been conceived previously , by an unidentified production illustrator for Harve Bennett ' s 1989 / 1990 " " ( " aka " " " Star Trek Academy " " ) movie project , and like " Star Trek : Enterprise " , intended as a prequel production , but which was scrapped in favor of what was to become . It is highly unlikely though , that either Drexler , Berman or Braga had even been aware of the previous design , as none of the men had formally been affiliated with the movie franchise prior to 1993 / 1994 . The design of the unidentified production illustrator itself , only became common knowledge in 2004 , when his sketches were featured in the " It Started With a Story " - special feature on the DVD release . On an additional side note , the NX - class also shared a more that passing design resemblance with FASA ' s 1983 No . 2514 , the , part of their " " . Production CGI model . Shortly thereafter , the NX - class model was sent to Foundation Imaging , where it underwent final refinements by modeler Pierre Drolet , under the supervision of Visual Effects Producer Dan Curry and Foundation ' s Robert Bonchune . ( ) Originally , it was Bonchune who was slated to do the final version , as Drolet recalled ; " " Initially , I was not suppose [ d ] to build the " Enterprise " NX - 01 . Rob Bonchune was the one originally assigned to build it however , because he was the visual effect supervisor for the show " Enterprise " , it would have been too much to manage . I know it was hard for him to let it go but Rob gave me the privilege to build it . " " Doug Drexler added , " " The art department ’ s ' foam core ' proof of concept model acted as understudy for the super - high detail version [ . . . ] in , . This CG concept model had been through battles to rival any that the fictional ship had been through during its four year television voyage . It had been volleyed back and forth between art department and producers . It had been pulled , stretched , cut , and pounded before it had been given a go for throttle - up , and shipped off to the CG facility where it would be built with extreme attention to detail [ . . . ] Once the bloody battles between art department and production were over , the high rez version of the ship could be built in relative peace [ . . . ] The high resolution model was built with laser precision . " " Rob Bonchune noted , " " Pierre Drolet was dedicated wholeheartedly to building [ the NX - class ] . " " ( ) Drolet took plenty of time over translating Drexler ' s low - resolution approval model into the version meant for production . The approval model continued to see service throughout the entire run of " Star Trek : Enterprise " , as the main NX - class model ' s digital stand - in for pre - visualization or animatics work ; being of lesser resolution , that model was more suitable for that kind of work for cost efficiency reasons , as it took up less computer rendering time . The fact that the NX - class was built as a CG model rather than a practical studio model meant that it turned out to be more detailed than a physical model would have been . ( ) In fact , on his IMDb profile , Drolet himself referred to this digital model as " what ( at least at the time ) was the most detailed computer generated model in television history " and he went on to say , " " Taking up 200 megabytes of RAM merely to load , the digital model consists of 500 , 000 polygons with 156 separate images painted on it . " " As proud as Drolet was of his build , he did concede that the chore was a daunting one , saying , " " I have been asked by a lot of people what was my experience building the " Enterprise " NX - 01 , which was a bit stressful . The visual effect schedule was tight and , on top of that , while I was building the NX - 01 I found out that there were many " Star Trek " technical specifications I was not aware of . I also had to deal with a lot of expectations coming from different people [ . . . ] After adding a lot of details all around and played as much as I could with the proportions issues , the NX - 01 was presented to Rick Berman . Fortunately for me he liked it and his only comment was to add some more windows on the saucer . A lot of pressure lifted off my shoulder after that . " " Repeatedly asked to devise the best shots of the NX - class , Foundation Imaging viewed the ship from almost every possible camera angle , early in the series run . They found that the class was highly photogenic . " " We were really trying hard to find a bad camera angle , " " mused Foundation ' s Aram Granger . ( ) " Enterprise " s hull was originally meant to have only a slight bronze tint , as was favored by both Herman Zimmerman and Doug Drexler , but its appearance was changed to become more clearly bronze - colored , for reasons unknown to Drexler . It was not until the advent of that an NX - class vessel with a hull featuring merely a slight shade of bronze was depicted . Drexler at first was not convinced there was even a color change , remarking , " " Truthfully I am not sure if the NX1 , and 2 are different . it may just be the lighting condition . " " Nevertheless , Koji Kuramura set him straight , observing , " " The color of the NX - 02 is different than from the NX - 01 . It ' s slight . But back then Rob , me and Mitch Suskin , thought it would be cool to change the color to give them a different look . Especially since they [ were ] going to be in the same shots . " " The first time the " Columbia " was featured was in a scene that showed her under construction , designed by John Eaves , who gleefully remarked , " " This was a fun drawing . . . It was great to put Doug ' s NX into the space dock and have a new ship being built from the same class of Starship . " " Though Eaves , naturally , closely followed the lines as established by Drexler and Drolet , there was one noticeable exception ; Eaves endowed the second class vessel with a larger deflector dish , which was met with sympathy by Drolet . " " Later on , " " he said , " " I was glad when John Eaves redesigned the skinny dish attached on the front of the NX - 01 and introduced it on the NX - 02 " Columbia " under construction . " " The CG " Columbia " construction model , using the NX - 01 for a base , was built by Koji Kuramura ( who also adapted the model for it to become the in ) . He commented , " " The shot of the " Columbia " in the Drydock was one that I did . I took some extra time to relight the shot so that the " Columbia " showed better in that set up . I don ' t remember who did the one for the " Enterprise " launch . But I added more lites and changed how [ they were ] [ . . . ] lighting the ship . " " Refit NX - class design . Doug Drexler designed an extensive refit - NX - class which had an added secondary hull reminiscent of that of the , with nacelles moving closer in appearance to those on that class . Starting to appear on from onward and presented to the general public in the " " calendar , it has given rise to the assumption in certain circles that , had the series been renewed for a fifth season , the refit design would have been featured . Drexler himself has dispelled that notion , pointing out , " " Keep in mind that there were no official plans to refit the ship . This is something that I would have liked to have seen . In my world , Engineering as seen in the first four would have remained intact . Certainly an upgrade would happen . If the secondary hull was jettisoned , the ship would still be warp - capable . Needless to say , the secondary hull would have contained a much more powerful warp core . " " The fact that Doug Drexler – an avid fan of " Star Trek : The Original Series " – embarked on his redesign project was in line with his " I ' m a ' canon ' kind of guy " remark , and , while not overtly apparent at the time , was indicative of the elevated stress levels during the design stage , due to the raised tensions between producers and creative ( fan ) staff on what a " proper " prequel visual style or design lineage should look like . Some production staffers , Robert Bonchune having been one of the more vocal ones , did vent their after - the - fact frustration and criticism , years later , on several Internet blogs . Even the usually diplomatic Drexler could not refrain from making an acerbic riposte , " " You ' ll make a fine producer ! " " to one fan ' s criticism of his refit - NX design , speaking volumes in that respect . Doug Drexler ' s refit NX - class struck a chord with former creative staff colleagues , who helped him out with some of the details , like Mike Okuda , who designed signage graphics that were reminiscent of what was seen on Federation ships in " Star Trek : The Original Series " and which Drexler had always wanted to do in the first place . " " I wanted Starfleet style markings from the start , " " he revealed , " " but the idea was nixed . " " Also involved was Pierre Drolet , reprising his role as builder of the highly detailed CGI model . Drolet too was like - minded , though not from a fan ' s perspective , but rather from that of a cinematographer , and thereby disagreeing with co - worker Aram Granger ' s assessment . " " Rob " [ Bonchune ] " and I realized soon enough that the " Akira " Class ' basic shape was not as interesting looking as the elegant horsy neck of the " Constitution " Class ' " Enterprise " NCC - 1701 they used in the first " Star Trek " movie . The camera did not like the full frontal and side view of the NX - 01 low profile shape . This is why most of the camera shots in the TV show were almost always at 45 degree view from the bottom or the top . I included the " Enterprise " NX - 01 upgraded with a secondary hull attached , which was redesigned by the NX - 01 designer Doug Drexler . I personally think the upgraded NX - 01 look [ s ] better [ . . . ] I also used the new dish on the upgraded NX - 01 . " " The refit design began to appear in officially licensed merchandise and was initially featured in the 2014 calendar . In , licensed model kit company Polar Lights released a complete kit of the refit , in the wake of a " conversion kit " produced by unlicensed " garage kit " maker Starship Models in . The ship was also produced as a starship miniature and special issue of the " " as the " NX - Class Refit " in 2016 . On both licensed occasions Drexler served as technical consultant and CGI illustrator .