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Behind-the-scenes: Designing the Delta Flyer
ST:M article by Rick Sternbach, designer of the Delta Flyer (adapted by Janet)
Click any image which shows a link in order to see it full-size.
The design brief for the Delta Flyer called for a tough, all-enviroment shuttlecraft that combined Starfleet, Maquis, and Borg technology. The final ship was designed by Rick Sternbach, who worked hard to find a new and interesting shape.
| The Delta Flyer began as a Season Five writer concept for an "all-enviroment shuttle" capable of deep-space missions, atmospheric flight and planetary landings. It was to make excursions into ocean water in [#103 Thirty Days] and, not without damage, into solid rock in [#99 Once Upon A Time], both Season Five stories. |  The Delta Flyer in Voyager's shuttlebay. [#146 Unimatrix Zero, Part One] |
The hull design process began in June 1998, with the usual page upon page of felt-pen doodles, as Sternbach looked for visual inspirations to gain a sense of the overall shape and function of the ship.
An early sketch by Sternbach of numerous design possibilities.
Descriptions of the exterior and interior came from the writers and producers as the episode [#97 Extreme Risk] evolved - it was to make its debut in this episode. The crew cabin would accomodate at least five persons. Tom Paris' single offset pilot station would be at the front, a departure from the tandem seating of previous shuttlecraft and of the runabouts seen in other Star Trek shows such as [DS9]. With the cockpit shape and window frames determined by the set designs, the exterior hull would mirror those elements and employ that styling, with additional key aspects of Borg technology (in the story, reflecting Seven of Nine's design input).
During the doodle stage, Sternbach explored various simple shapes which might be plausible extensions of Starfleet hardware, from familiar wedges to streamlined darts. A few sketches looked like miniature Voyagers, or larger versions of existing shuttles, with elements of the USS Defiant shuttlecraft Chaffee (Type 10). While making the preliminary sketches, a lot of questions came up: what about warp pods, where to put the navigational deflector, phasers, RCS thrusters? And how do you board the shuttlecraft (beaming excluded)? One sketch of a pointy hull concept caught the attention of visual effects producer Dan Curry. He asked Sternbach if he could develop it more.
Rick Sternbach: "When working down from the producers that they wanted something called the all-environment shuttle, the description of it was that it was bigger than a standard shuttle and it would be able to do a number of amazing things. As we found out, it could even go under water. So design work on the eventual Delta Flyer started again with lots and lots of doodles, shapes, some were streamlined, some were a little bit blockier like the shuttles we had on [TNG] and the early part of [Star Trek Voyager]. The Delta Flyer would have to be very cool. And so went through pages and pages of sketches. I was sitting at my board and had a number of marker doodles in work, and Dan Curry comes up behind me, and he points at one shape and says: "That looks pretty interesting. Why don't you detail that one out a little more." And, you know, looking back at the sketch, it is very streamlined, the wings were a bit stubby but we widened out the wings a bit, again gave it every feature that a good shuttle should have to keep it in that Starfleet style. And eventually the Delta Flyer was born."
We did not see the Delta Flyer's rear compartment until [#100 Timeless], but Sternbach predicted that the writers would need a second room, so he designed a large hatch at the rear of the ship which could be used to install different design modules such as a lab. This gave the writers the freedom to add any kind of room they wanted to this small ship.
A few large blue pencil drawings followed in which Sternbach refined the Delta Flyer into a more solid mass, onto which details were added including impulse nozzels, blended warp pods in the wings, an entry hatch, Bussard fuel collectors, and phasers. The first sketches saw initial heavy Klingon shield plating eliminated.
Sternbach developed several designs but it was clear that the pointed ship was preferred.
The above sketch by Sternbach shows the square nose, front-mounted torpedo launcher and Klingon shield plating - these were removed or changed.
There were originally far too many Borg enhancements (mounted in small cutouts), which were toned down to just a few, but still nicely visible. A nose-mounted torpedo launcher was moved underneath, and two pulse cannons were abandoned. During the approvals process the producers and visual effects department requested that the pointy nose be shortened and rounded off, and the wings widened.
Several features were added to the design in case they were needed in later episodes:
- Vents and hatches delineated the warp reactor on the underside. The reactor itself is a flat 'pancake' matter-antimatter chamber built into the floor.
- Emergency plasma flush vents were cut into the lower wings.
- A large drop-down Borg-style hatch at the rear allowed for entry and for 'mission modules' (e.g. the laboratory) to be swapped in and out.
- A small escape hatch was built into the roof, should the transporters and aft hatch fail.
- 'Speed brakes' were scribed into the aft flanks, which could hide all sorts of new devices.
Sternbach refined the design. This intermediate version has
lost the Klingon shield plating but has many more Borg 'enhancements' than the finished ship.
| Sternbach drew up blueprints as if the Delta Flyer was to be built as a physical miniature, even though it would be a CGI model (CGI = computer generated image). This was because orthographic views (top, bottom, side, front, back) are often necessary for both methods of executing a model. CGI modeller Rob Bonchune of Foundation Imaging scanned and input the drawings into Lightwave 3D (a professional graphics program). He 'lofted' the hull into a set of smooth, 3D, shaded objects. Set blueprints of cockpit were provided to ensure a match with the interior, and colour specifications were given to Foundation Imaging for component 'painting' and building the surface texture maps, based partly on the Delta Flyer set walls and on existing Starfleet hulls and known Borg hardware. A few hull parts which were difficult to convey in the blueprint views were worked out in small-scale foamcore models. Some modifications were made on the fly e.g. the addition of the familiar blue warp grilles and the relocation of the wing phaser strips. Suggestions were given to the visual effects department to be passed on to Foundation Imaging as regards areas of lighting and articulated parts e.g. the extendable landing pds, the speed brakes, hatches and the warp pods. |  The Delta Flyer is seen on its side in order to read the labels more easily. Sternback prepared construction blueprints for Rob Bonchune who built the model of the Delta Flyer. As the ship is symmetrical, he needed to draw only one side. |
 fore view |
 aft view |
starboard view
ventral view
dorsal view
In a reverse of the need for set drawings to make the CGI parts, details of the CGI model were required by the studio mill to build a pair of small walls behind the cockpit set. This thus hid a set of welded steel frames visible outside the windows, and were finished off with the proper colors and shapes to appear like the impulse intakes that would be seen looking aft.
[#140 Good Shepherd]
Two years after the initial inception of the Delta Flyer, more additions and modifications to the two sets and the CGI model were still being made. Escape pods were mentally squeezed into the aft sections: one escape pod (its interior and exterior) is seen in [#140 Good Shepherd], and in that episode chunks of hull plating were torn away. The escape pods were particulary fun to invent, though they added to a well known but thorny problem. As sometimes happens with cinematic spacecraft (not to mention some cinematic boats, aircraft, and cars), the Delta Flyer appeared rather larger inside than outside! necessitating a recalculation of the dimensions of the 'actual' Delta Flyer from a length of about 15 metres (49 feet) to perhaps 21 metres (70 feet). The various changes account for the different specifications which appear in canon sources. (Delta Flyer specifications are on this page.) Earlier, when the aft station was built for [#100 Timeless] it was a real challenge to fit everything within the conceptual space.
The original construction drawings show that the Delta Flyer is just over 40 feet long, however it was decided that the rear compartment needed to be larger. Therefore, at a later stage the design team redefined the ship's size making it approximately 70 feet long.
, to rebuild the Delta Flyer with the specifications it had developed without the viewer having to imagine, say, space where in 'reality' it did not exist.
