How ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Recreated the Enterprise Bridge

The most recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery, “Such Sweet Sorrow,” brought viewers to the bridge of the USS Enterprise. As Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) steps onto the bridge he remarks that “She looks as good as I remember.” Number One (Rebecca Romijn) greets him with a “Welcome home.” Like the exterior of the ship, the Enterprise‘s bridge was updated to fit the visual style of Star Trek: Discovery. Updating such a well-known set was no easy task, but Discovery‘s production designer, Tamara Deverell, was up to the challenge. In an interview with the official Star Trek website, Deverell explained how she approached designing the Enterprise bridge’s set.

” I really started with TOS, which is what I grew up with, and looked at that ship and how we could do all kinds of nods to it without making it look like it’s made out of cardboard,” Deverell says. “As much as we all love TOS, the audiences of today want more. We started with the same size as the original Enterprise and, of course, we enlarged it by adding a back hallway. Some of the parameters of the original size…the step down, the placement of the captain’s chair, where the consoles were, where Uhura was, where Spock was, all the main characters, we kept that general layout, much more so than some of the other Enterprises we’ve seen.

“Then, I really wanted to color-code. So, I was playing a lot with the colors of the Enterprise. There are actually variations [of the red-orange] in the Enterprises. That’s very distinct, and I went through the archives at CBS to look at those colors and try and match them, but in a new way. We were bringing in the Discovery feel, but also using materials and methods of building it that were new to us, like metal powder coating — metal pieces that are powder-coated create a really rich color and strong basis to build the set. We experimented with it on the Enterprise, and I think we’re going to use it more in Star Trek. It looks more like a ship than just using wood and plaster.

Deverell and her team made sure to layer in some Easter eggs for longtime fans to pick out. “[In TOS] they had a light in the turbolift that goes up and down,” she says. “We put a monitor there, but we did a very similar graphic on it. There are so many, we tried to put those things in. We actually got some reproductions of the original buttons on the console, the same exact size and color, and we used those as the basis of our buttons.”

What did you think of Discovery‘s take on the Enterprise bridge? Let us know in the comments. New Star Trek: Discovery episodes become available to stream Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBS All Access.

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