By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Trek: Voyager had plenty of special effects, but arguably none were more impressive than when the ship landed on a planet in the Season 2 premiere episode “The 37’s.” This was a first for the franchise, bringing to life one of Gene Roddenberry’s ideas that he had previously considered too expensive to show onscreen. However, this effect was almost a disappointment thanks to behind-the-scenes production issues, including improperly designed landing struts and a CGI model that was just too small.
This particular Voyager special effect was one the team had been dreaming of for a long time…for example, franchise graphic designer Michael Okuda previously recommended to exec producer Rick Berman that this ship should be able to land as a way to distinguish it from what came before. Accordingly, Rick Sternbach had developed several possible ship designs that would accommodate a landing capability, and he made sure that the finished design featured small hatches on the bottom hull meant to house landing equipment. It was only after designing those struts, however, that producers realized that the ship’s “legs” looked far too thin to support its body.
The shot of Voyager landing on a planet in “The 37’s” was meant to be this big, show-stopping special effect, and producers were understandably concerned that viewers would be disappointed if it looked like the ship always skipped leg day. In the grand tradition of television, they decided to fix this problem in post-production…in this case, by placing rock outcroppings and other ground features strategically around Voyager as it landed. Go back and watch the episode, and you’ll see how they effectively obscured audiences’ view of those teeny landing struts.
However, that wasn’t the only problem with Voyager’s fancy special effect…as it turns out, the show’s digital artists had accidentally made the CGI model of the ship too tiny. This annoyed visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore (not to be confused with Trek writer and Battlestar Galactica reboot showrunner Ronald D. Moore), who was disappointed by the landing effect because “the scale of the Voyager on the ground was incorrect.” However, he didn’t feel that audiences would necessarily notice “because there’s nothing really to relate it to; the people are in the foreground, the ship’s in the background, and we kinda kept it that way.”
For longtime Star Trek fans, this Voyager moment was more than just another special effect…it was also the realization of a decades-old dream that began with Gene Roddenberry. The franchise creator had originally dreamed of having the Enterprise regularly land on planets in The Original Series, but he soon realized just how expensive it would be to have the ship land somewhere new each week. This is how the transporter was born, as it allowed Captain Kirk and his erstwhile crew to quickly visit somewhere new and then head back to the ship via a much cheaper “beam me up” special effect.
Voyager’s producers came to the same conclusion that Roddenberry did, which is why the show mostly stuck to the transporter special effect rather than constantly having the ship land. Nonetheless, it landed several more times after “The 37’s,” and producers had a much easier time bringing this ambitious effect to life on their subsequent attempts. They did so despite the CGI model for the ship being too small, which arguably proves that size really doesn’t matter in the 24th century. We wouldn’t recommend telling that to Captain Janeway about her morning coffee cup sizes, though, unless you want her to kill you quicker than she killed Tuvix!
