New Star Trek Website Lets You Virtually Tour the Enterprise

04/30/2023 11:42 am EDT

Star Trek fans can now virtually tour the bridge of the Starship Enterprise thanks to the Roddenberry Estate and OTOY, which have revealed what they describe in a press release as "the next phase of their multi-decade collaboration on the Roddenberry Archive – capturing Roddenberry's lifetime of works for future generations to explore with quiescent historical accuracy and holographic immersion." Serving as a "coda" to Star Trek: Picard's series finale, the Roddenberry Archive team has unveiled its largest set of Star Trek digital archive works yet. Fans can access these works via a new website that touches on all three major eras of Star Trek with contributions from William Shatner, John de Lancie, and Terry Matalas.

The new release allows fans to see the evolution of the Enterprise bridge across Star Trek's history. Each bridge is represented in the timeline with a 1:1 scale "in-universe" 360 recreation.

Touring Star Trek's Enterprise

John de Lancie, who has played Q since 1987's Star Trek: The Next Generation premiere and reprised the role most recently in Star Trek: Picard, narrates an exploration of the evolution and legacy of the Starship Enterprise bridge. It begins with Pato Guzman's original 1964 sketches and continues through its television and film appearances all the way up to its latest incarnation aboard the Enterprise-G, as revealed in the Star Trek: Picard's series finale.

The bridges are represented both as filming sets used for production as well as "in-universe" life-size, functional immersive virtual interiors, allowing visitors to the Starship Enterprise bridge to see working turbolifts and consoles, fully immersing themselves in the Star Trek Universe. The Gene Roddenberry Estate produced the recreations, overseen by Star Trek artists Denise and Michael Okuda, Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler, and Dave Blass. 

William Shatner's Star Trek Testimonial

For a limited time, the Roddenberry Archive portal is testing an experimental technology preview on desktop web browsers, allowing fans to walk onto the bridges of the Enterprise and explore them in every detail, all from an instantaneous live stream available on the web page. That's accompanied by a series of 2023 featurettes exploring Star Trek's behind-the-scenes production process with commentary by Star Trek luminaries.

The first featurette comes from William Shatner's hours-long testimonial for the Roddenberry Archive, captured holographically within a recreation of the 1979 USS Enterprise bridge. Star Trek's original leading man shares his memories, aspirations, and intentions in originating Captain Kirk in 1965 and playing him through his death scene in 1994's Star Trek Generations, including his personal views on the future he imagines for the complete with visualizations from Shatner's 1995 novel Ashes of Eden.

Behind the scenes of Star Trek

The second featurette features interviews with members of Star Trek's cast and crew, including James Conway, Director, Star Trek: The Next Generation; David Livingston, Producer / Director, Star Trek: The Next Generation; David Gerrold, Program Consultant, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Andrew Probert, Consulting Senior Illustrator, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Herman Zimmerman, Production Designer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terry Matalas, showrunner, Star Trek: Picard; and Dave Blass Production Designer, on Star Trek: Picard.

Also included in this release is the "765874" concept video. It borrows elements from William Shatner's Ashes of Eden novel and Star Trek: Picard's rebuilding of the Enterprise-D. The archive also completed work bringing Majel Roddenberry's voice to life, using phonetic recordings she made in 2008. Future updates will production work from "The Cage," Star Trek's original pilot, and onwards, as well as a full and complete 1:1 scale recreation of the entire interior of the original USS Enterprise, as seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

"The Roddenberry Archive portal gives the public a first glimpse into the many years of incredible work done by the archive's world-class production team both in preserving Gene Roddenberry's legacy in tandem with visually documenting 60 years of Star Trek history in quiescent detail," said CEO of OTOY and Roddenberry Archive Jules Urbach in a press release. "Through new technology, we can bring audiences back in time as if they were there on set during the making of Star Trek, providing a window into new dimensions of the Star Trek universe. The team's efforts to capture Star Trek history in full lifelike detail with the highest degree of historical accuracy is an important milestone in preserving Gene Roddenberry's vision for future generations to explore and see, through the lens of those that worked with him."

"Over multiple decades, we have been exploring the frontiers of new technology to how we might document my father's vision, work and ideas in ways that can be experienced by generations yet to come," said Rod Roddenberry, President of Roddenberry Entertainment. "The Roddenberry Archive is not just a way to honor my father's legacy, but my mother's, Majel, as well. She voiced the Enterprise computer for decades. In 2008, before she left us, she meticulously recorded her voice phonetically, with the intent to preserve it for some future technology to bring it back to life. We waited 15 years, and today I am so proud to have her voice, just as I remember it, welcoming visitors to the Roddenberry Archive portal"

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