GEEK WARNING: PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT REQUIRED.
Nostalgia levels may spike without warning, so proceed carefully.
Hello, my name is Darrell… and yes, I’m a Trekkie. Always have been. Always will be.
The Project That Stopped Me in My Tracks
Every now and then, some corner of the internet taps you on the shoulder and says, “Sit down. You’ll want to see this.” Stumbling upon Mike Nevitt (aka Mr. Trek) and his full-3D physical reconstruction of the original Starship Enterprise was one of those moments for me. I pressed play expecting a neat tour. Instead, I found myself leaning forward like a kid with a brand-new model kit, grinning before I even realized it.
Three years of dedicated work … compressed into an 18-minute fly-through that feels both reverent and fresh. You can watch the full video below. It’s the Enterprise as she lived in the imaginations of a generation, restored plank by plank in digital space.
And yeah, I watched it twice. Maybe three times..
A Brief Digression: My First Blueprints
Long before YouTube let us stroll through starships, I had a different gateway: the Star Trek Blueprints. My uncle handed me a copy sometime in the mid-Seventies, back when reruns were my after-school routine and science fiction felt like a whispered invitation to something more.
I still remember the snap & crackle of opening that brown vinyl folder. Suddenly I wasn’t just watching Star Trek. I was touring it. Studying it. Learning the layout the way a kid learns the back roads of his hometown. Where Kirk slept. Where Spock raised that Vulcan eyebrow in the briefing room. Where the transporter hummed its promise of elsewhere.
Star Trek was more than a flashy spaceship, cool technology, a stirring theme song, and bright colors. It taught me about character, friendship, loyalty, and goodness to others, and encouraged me to think beyond myself. Through stories “taking place with aliens on a world light years away,” it explored issues like race, sex roles, and war. It highlighted reason, science, logic, and empathy, showed both the promise and dangers of technology, and raised questions of morality and identity through life, death, artificial intelligence, and cloning. And while the starship was armed, the crew usually sought peaceful resolutions while navigating the necessities of war. When microwave ovens, desktop computers, mobile phones, and other consumer technology began appearing on the home front, I was prepared.
Those Blueprints didn’t just feed my imagination; they gave it structure. A kind of architecture for wonder. Looking back, I can see why this new project stirred something deep.
Who Is Mr. Trek?
Yes, there is a sort of pecking order among Trekkies, and for the record, my geekery is mostly limited to the Original Series (think Kirk and Spock) and The Next Generation (think bald-headed captain and green android). Yeah, I know.
Even so, what Mr. Trek has done is impressive beyond measure.
You see, Mike isn’t just a fan with rendering software. He’s a craftsman with a historian’s eye. His work blends studio-era design notes, episode-by-episode analysis, behind-the-scenes stills, and a level of creative reconstruction that borders on prayerful.
He is building an insanely ambitious 1:25-scale physical model of the original Starship Enterprise, interior and exterior!
His Patreon and channel are full of evidence: meticulous set studies, lighting experiments, frame-accurate recreations, thoughtful commentary on what the show intended, even when the budget couldn’t support it
The man has that rare mix of discipline and delight; just look at his work! You can tell he’s chasing accuracy, but he’s also chasing a feeling: that spark so many of us felt the first time the Enterprise drifted across the screen.
Walking the Corridors Again
What made the walkthrough hit me the hardest wasn’t the polish, though that’s impressive. It was the sense of inhabiting the ship. The camera rounds each corner with a quiet confidence, as if it already knows the way. Everything is familiar yet sharper, like returning to your childhood home and realizing the ceilings were higher than you remembered.
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video. 
Screenshot from Mr Trek’s video.
Mike doesn’t overdo it. No flashy camera tricks. No unnecessary embellishments. Just the ship, steady and sure, treated with a kind of humble reverence that mirrors how many of us held it in our minds for decades.
It’s all there: the Briefing Room where Kirk’s crew gave him the low-down on the mission, the transporter rooms gleaming background, the red railings around the captain’s chair. As a scale model, it is impressive, as a re-creation of something that mostly existed in people’s imagination, it’s sublime.
Why I’m Sharing This
When something stirs long-dormant joy, it’s worth passing along. The world’s noisy enough these days, and I find myself holding tight to the quiet things: the small creations that remind us wonder is still accessible if we take the time to look.
Mike, er, Mr. Trek’s project did that for me. It brought back the spark of those Blueprint afternoons, head bent over a starship I could almost touch.
By the way — if Trek starships are your jam, check out my conversation with another master builder, Bill Krause: Beyond the Build.
And if you find yourself smiling along the way, or pausing a moment longer than you meant to, well… I warned you about the nostalgia surge. PPE was required.
That’s it for now. Thanks for showing up. It matters.
Veni, Vidi, Scripsi 