Did You Know: A recent Star Trek ship was created by a fan?

Star Trek: Picard revealed the new Enterprise-F but it has a surprising backstory.

Star Trek is known for its fan support. It isn’t only a long-lasting franchise that covers nearly 60 years of science fiction but it’s also a series that entices fans. Fans supporting franchises isn’t anything new but fans of Trek may have been the first real group of people to create their own Trek stories in masse.

Not only were the fan-made stories circulated in fan-made magazines and newsletters, but full television series and films set in Trek’s expansive universe have been created as well. Many actors, like Tawny Newsome, writers and directors started off as Trek fans.

Yet, Star Trek: Picard may have done a first. The producers of Picard have used a fan’s creation as the design of the Enterprise-F. According to Giant Freaking Robot, a fan named Adam Ilhe created the ship in Star Trek Online, and Star Trek seemingly canonized it.

It was part of an official Star Trek contest back in 2011, and Ilhe was the winner of the contest. Giant Freaking Robot also posted the measurements and details of the Enterprise-F;

"Length: 1,061.1 metersWidth: 371 metersStandard Crew: 1600Max Crew: 2500Max Warp: 9.99Transwarp Drive EquippedSlipstream Drive EquippedSovereign class Enterprise E is only 685 meters long."

Canonizing non-canon ideas is a staple of this Star Trek regime

The current regime headed by Alex Kurtzman is kinda making this a thing, finding non-canon items and canonizing them. The Enterprise-F is obviously just one example of this but another is giving Spock a first name. There are a few other smaller ones that have popped up here and there and one would and should expect more.

This isn’t the first time Trek has done such a thing, as several properties have referenced events from Star Trek The Animated Series but that cartoon continues to be non-canon by Paramount. So even though the cartoon and backstories of certain characters and events may share a story, they are not one and the same.