Excelsior

In 1984, Star Trek fans were introduced to a new ship that would turn out to be one of the most recurring ship classes in the franchise.

The USS Excelsior - The Great Experiment - was to be the great transwarp drive starship to replace the old Constitution Class starships like Enterprise. The model created for the ship was intended for the one movie, but kept coming back again and again in the movies and in the subsquent television series set after its first appearance (further expanded by stock footage). The original model went on to play other ships, such as the Hood, Repulse, Melbourne, Enterprise B, and Lakota (and many others through stock footage) and was joined by a second physical model and multiple CG models. This page is dedicated to that original studio model designed for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock by Bill George at ILM.