Production Designer Dave Blass Talks About Designing the Titan and Updating LCARS

Dave Blass. Images: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images / Paramount+.

APRIL 6, 2023 - Star Trek has a look and feel that separates it from other science fiction properties. You can drop into any episode or film and instantly recognize that it’s Trek. The recognizable ships and uniforms are all part of Star Trek’s sleek visual language. To make this visual language happen, production designers quite literally build the world. New and exciting technologies have presented opportunities and challenges when crafting the future as we know it in Star Trek. Dave Blass, Production Designer for Star Trek: Picard, sat down with Tyler Rogoway from TheDrive.com to talk about designing the 25th Century.

Blass spoke on how technologies have changed since Star Trek: Nemesis to how things were developed for Picard. 

The innovations in 3D have truly been a paradigm shift in the design world. The ability to create a set in the computer and do virtual walk-throughs of the set and then send those files [to] both the VFX and the construction team is amazing. It was a lifesaver as much of the design work on Picard was done during the height of the pandemic… Can you imagine doing that with pencil-drawn blueprints and white foam-core models? ...Everyone talks about how 4k impacts, but really it was HD that made the difference…Gone are the days of the VHS pause lines. Fans can get crystal clear images off their HD feeds. So we’ve known for years that you can’t do the little jokes on the capsule labels on the set like they used to. Now fans will see it. They catch spelling mistakes and everything.

Blass also talked a little about how they employ The Volume. Check out this detailed article for how The Volume works and how another Star show developed the technology. Essentially it's the closest thing we have to a holodeck today.

The USS Titan is a character in its own right on Picard. Blass spoke about the changes to the Titan from the one Captain Riker commanded.

My design approach was simple. I put a photo of Bill [Krause]’s design next to a 1964 Ford GT40, and then put a 2006 Ford GT on the board. I said, the Constitution class, is this, I want the evolution of that.  And that’s what we delivered. A bit sleeker, a bit more powerful, but with similar lines that you could instantly recognize. I didn’t want to change it to be a Lamborghini or Ferrari, I wanted a Ford GT so it felt like an evolution. I think the team took those marching orders and did a great job with it.

When it came to the Titan interior, Blass explained,

In the TNG era, they created the iconic LCARS and “Okudagrams,” mainly because they couldn’t afford dozens of screens and the playback to put on them… and they completely worked because of the elegant design and functionality. But now viewers won’t accept a touch screen that doesn’t move because we all now have touch screens in our pockets… We used the newest technology available with transparent OLED screens that are just a piece of glass with video playback on them. We also used curved screens and backlit projection to create these huge tech consoles… The overall shape echoes the Enterprise D with swooping ramps and three command chairs.

Humbly, Blass says the “stamp” he wants to leave on Star Trek is, “…to evolve what had been done before and not draw attention to the sets.”

Check out the entire article here and find out which cast member geeked out the hardest over walking onto the USS Titan.