Cousteau (yacht) model

Though an embedded auxiliary craft, known as a "captain's yacht", was already envisioned byAndrew Probert when he designed theGalaxy-class studio model, it was, due to various reasons, never shown in theStar Trek: The Next Generation television shows. However, the final draft of12 March1998 of the script forStar Trek: Insurrection explicitly called for an appearance of this kind of craft, at first in scene 136, "EXT. SPACE - THE YACHT - (OPTICAL) falls away from the belly of the mother ship... and after a beat, the thrusters ignite and off they go...",[1] and a fully-realized vessel and deployment sequence of this kind was finally developed for this occasion. The, what eventually became,Cousteau, was named byMichael Okuda after the vessel named for the esteemed20th century oceanographerJacques Cousteau,[2] who, in turn, acted upon a request ofPatrick Stewart to do so. (Cinefex, issue 77, p. 72)

Design[]

The design of the captain's yacht fell to IllustratorJohn Eaves, who commented, "Luckily, I had to design only the top of the captain's yacht, because the bottom of it had already been established on theEnterprise itself; there is even a separation line on the miniaturestudio model. The yacht is a diplomatic cruising vessel that's docked out for touring. It's almost 110 feet long, so it's a pretty big ship." (The Secrets of Star Trek: Insurrection, p. 39) Elaborating he has stated, "It was more of an accident that the shape of the yacht worked out really well, based on that shape down there[on the saucer]. What was good is that the torpedo launcher on the bottom of theEnterprise has a real nice cut line on it. We never thought of it at the time, but it worked out really well as the separation line for the yacht. So, with a few little line changes, we had the bottom of the yacht down. We had the separation from the line of the torpedo launcher right in the middle of that little tower section, and we could separate the yacht and still have that launcher as part of the ship. I kind of made it a touring vehicle – it's meant to be a very luxurious vehicle. We designed it after a real yacht, so it really has a ship look to it." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 4, p. 29) He added, "I designed the enginenacelles to fold up into the starship's hull for storage – like the wings on a jet aboard a carrier – then deploy down as the yacht undocks. Fortunately, the detail already present on the starship worked perfectly to accommodating these nacelles." (Cinefex, issue 77, p. 72)

Eaves originally had his design with a recessed windshield, allowing it to dock snugly right behind theEnterprise's protruding torpedo launchers. Yet, as the new ship was in the process of being translated intoCGI, the producers hit upon the notion that it would be more aesthetically pleasing to smooth out the front area into the rounded surface as seen, raising the question, according to Eaves (who faithfully complied), "How do they park this thing?" (The Secrets of Star Trek: Insurrection, p. 43) According to his orographic design sketches, Eaves submitted his final designs inFebruary 1998.

Designing theCousteau's deployment[]

Deployment sequence as designed	Deployment sequence as evaluation animatics	Deployment sequence as shown

As for theCousteau's deployment, Eaves remarked," First thing we did with theFederation ships was that there was a captain's yacht, and what we did with that was that we took the bottom of theEnterprise model and logically it was gonna be the little torpedo launcher. So primarilyStar Trek: First Contact. And by accident the seam line around the drawing made a perfect without disturbing the torpedo launcher. And so, we took a casting from the bottom of the ILM ship, cut it along that line and built a yacht on top of it, basically. And used a kind of a schooner design to it with the traditional nacelles to it. And so, there is two flanking designs to it, thatJohn Goodson put on the miniature, and they worked excellent on the struts. We did just did a hinge-motion so that the nacelles could drop out, and the whole ship would detach from the whole ship." (Star Trek: Insurrection (Special Edition DVD), special feature, "The Art of Insurrection") Eaves further added,

"Well I'll have to tell you more about the lucky accident of this working out the way it did!!! I had just started on DS9 when we started working onFirst Contact and I had never seen an episode ofVoyager and only two or three episodes of TNG so I didn't even know that a captains yacht was a new design element to Federation Starships. The Torpedo Launcher on the E was basically a new shape for the dome seen on the previousEnterprises and it just made for a perfect place for a main launcher, My Yacht education didn't come till we started to work onInsurrection and and looking at was on the D andVoyager it only made sense to try and manipulate that launcher area into the Yacht, The lines worked out perfectly so as much as it looks like it was intentional it was incredible luck with how the lines worked and how easy it was to make a Yacht bay out of the lower section of the launcher. had I known more earlier, the design would have happened on FC so I'm the one to blame for drafting something in after the fact."[3]

According to his orographic design sketches, Eaves submitted his final deployment designs inDecember 1997. It is the deployment of theCousteau inInsurrection, that has made every other such conceived happenstance superfluous.Robert Bonchune andRick Sternbach vied to to do a similar thing with theAeroshuttle, but were nixed by the producers, or as Bonchune has put it, "In a nutshell, back atFoundation, we got into our heads that it would be cool to see the "captain's yacht" of theUSSVoyager, that being the AeroShuttle. Rick Sternbach gratuitously did a prelim design and I used part of that and designed the ship you see here.Mojo and I did a whole launch sequence, on spec, meaning "free" and then had it shown toRick Berman. The response: Mr. Berman thought it was nice, but didn't want to trump the captain's yacht launch sequence from the upcoming film "Insurrection". As you remember that was a VERY dramatic, epic and cool launch sequence."[4]

CGI models[]

ForInsurrection, the producers decided to complete the transition into thedigital realm and that this feature would be the first movie completely without the time honoredmotion control model photography. However, in this stage of the technique, that meant that the CGI workload had to be divided between two VFX houses,Santa Barbara Studios for the outer space shots, andBlue Sky/VIFX for the planet bound effects. As such, the model and effects, of theCousteau, were executed for this film by Santa Barbara Studios in theMaya CGI software. (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, issue 34, p. 29) A relatively early outing at the time into the realm of CGI, solicited the following remark of Eaves, "The CGI guys needed every possible line drawing. They wanted all the details in advance – which differed from the way I usually work with traditional modelmakers, leaving areas open for them to contribute. But Santa Barbara did not want to have to go through an approval process on every aspect of these ships – which made sense, because there wasn't time to make that happen while still getting the ships modeled and animated and rendered out. It was a learning experience for me to provide these detailed technical drawings." (Cinefex, issue 77, p. 72) Detailed scale comparison charts, originating from this desire has made Eaves set the in-universe dimensions of theCousteau at 110×86 feet. While perhaps not so intended, due to its predetermined position on the mother ship, theCousteau turned out to be one of the largest small-scaled Federation vessels.

In 2015Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection project managerBen Robinson has indicated that the original model computer files were no longer in existence, due toParamount Pictures'sfailure to maintain ownership over these, as well as due to Santa Barbara Studios' own demise, "Never found the CG models from Insurrection... so we're rebuilding them! Makes me feel likeDan Curry.", he explained, "I'm working on this[note: Son'a ships for theCollection] at the moment. It's tricky because the company that made the CG - Santa Barbara Studios didn't archive them and used their own software. Nothing is impossible though and I do have perfect reference[remark: referring to renders he had received for theStar Trek Fact Files years earlier]."[5] Since Robinson planned to have theCousteau included in theCollection as one of the first twoInsurrection outings, a new CGI model had to be painstakingly recreated, for which he commissioned an outside contractor, "The rebuilding work is being done by[Meshweaver's]Fabio Passaro. Luckily we have approved artwork to work from from the Fact Files days."[6]

True to his word, the issue for theCousteau was released on 22 June 2016, becoming indeed the first of theInsurrection ships thus released.[7]

Further reading[]

• Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, issue 75, 2016