Dick: Yes, I saw and taped "All Good Things..." and had to freeze-frame the ship to make sure it wasn't FJ's Dreadnought design (it wasn't -- the third nacelle is attached to the engineering hull and not the saucer section). The ship in the episode was designed by Greg Jein, who was not attempting to tip the hat to FJ at all and thought that a 3-nacelle design was a totally original concept, which he stated in a magazine interview. Either he never saw a Tech Manual, or saw the Dreadnought design and forgot about it in the intervening years.

I find it ironic that Jein's 3-nacelle design technically violates at least 3 of the 4 "Roddenberry's Rules for Starship Design" that were used to discredit FJ's ship design work. I think Jein got away with it because GR was already gone, or because said starship design rules are pretty bogus. (See more comments under Q19.) Upon further research, other "canon" ship designs (such as the Excelsior) may be in violation of "Roddenberry's Rules" as well.

Dick: I was 18 and had just joined organized Star Trek fandom at San Diego State University (S.T.A.R. San Diego) and attended my first Star Trek convention in Los Angeles (Bjo Trimble's Equicon '73). My friends were building phasers out of balsa wood and communicators out of cut-down plastic pencil boxes. Nothing was the same size twice. My dad decided they needed blueprints to follow. Using his engineering skills and the photos in Steven Whitfield's The Making of Star Trek, where the props were photographed next to rulers, FJ drew the hand phaser, the communicator, and the pistol phaser. I would bring photocopies to the lunch table at school, and my friends went nuts over them.

I came home from Equicon '73 with a photocopy of Matt Jefferies' "cutaway" of the Enterprise, which FJ deemed a pretty lame attempt at drawing the guts of the ship. (I remember him saying the way the warp nacelle pylons attached into the engineering hull of the ship was actually structurally unsound.) Next thing I knew, FJ had brought home a giant sheet of vellum and started drawing the whole ship, deck by deck, to see if he could fit in everything they talked about in the series, the Writer's Guide, and other sources -- from the bowling alley to the crew cabins to the sick bay. And -- yes -- the bathrooms! He had to erase a couple of the decks multiple times before he could get all the crew cabins to fit in.

Did I and my friends participate -- yes! We supplied photos, film clips, and references from books and episodes. We had frequent brainstorming sessions with FJ regarding things we'd like to see and where to get the proper documentation. FJ also had the help of the Memory Alpha group and other repositories of ST knowledge at the time. The Star Fleet Uniform patterns are copies of ones I developed (based on what we saw on-screen). Everyone in the thank-you's in the front of the book participated in some way.

We also thought that GR/Majel were participating indirectly in the project, as I would order assorted film clips from Lincoln Enterprises (which Majel was running hands-on at the time), and they would always be primo shots of just the things FJ needed -- the shuttlecraft, the bridge consoles, pistol phasers from just the right angle, etc. My friends would order film clips and get non-useful junk. Hmmmmm...

Most of my friends also personally participated in helping produce the "Equicon '74 Edition" of the Ship's Plans, which were actual blueprints that had to be cut apart with an X-Acto knife and a straight edge and then stapled into booklets. We had two cutting stations and one stapling station set up in FJ's house to handle the 500 copies. The whole place smelled like ammonia. Even with the windows open, you needed an aqualung to breathe in the rooms where the cutting was being done.

One set of blueprints got printed mirror-image (the wrong side of the master went through the machine, and because it was drawn on opaque vellum, the reversed image actually printed), and I tried to staple them three times before I realized there was something wrong with them. Since FJ was left-handed, he had the ability to "mirror-write" like Leonardo Da Vinci, and signed them in mirror reverse for me. They are one of my most prized possessions to this day.

The Equicon '74 Ship's Plans were legally licensed from Paramount, and FJ paid a royalty to same. (Ballantine Books took over the printing of subsequent editions, and made the royalty payments.) Pre-production copies of the Plans (with minor drawing errors in them) circulated through GR's offices before publication, and everyone saw them from the highest-ranking staff to the janitor. I have a letter signed by GR asking FJ when he (GR) was going to receive his own personal copy of the finished product. GR never signed the "Chief of Design" signature block on the master for the Ship's Plans, although there was provision for him to do so. (Probably because he was unhappy over the deal Paramount and Ballantine cut with FJ -- see Q6 and the FJ Timeline.) He did sign one uncut set of plans that were auctioned at Equicon 74. By "uncut" I mean that there were 4 large blueprint sheets, each with three pages printed on it (vs. 12-page booklets). If this item still exists today, it would be very valuable, as it (together with the correspondence already in my possession) helps prove that GR was aware of and approved of FJ's design work (otherwise, why would he be signing it?).

Dick: The two things you mentioned are my absolute dead-on favorites, too. Star Fleet Headquarters has a really nice '40s/futuristic feel to it, which was FJ's design aesthetic (one of FJ's favorite S/F movies was Things To Come). And the Dreadnought was one kick-ass piece of military machinery that could fire phasers and photon torpedoes from any direction, scoop up its shuttlecraft in the front (instead of waiting for them to catch up in the rear), and have warp drive if it ever had to "break out of there with the saucer section." Awesome.

I'm also fond of the banners/insignias for the other member systems of the UFP.

Dick: I guess my favorite thing has to be the bowling alley, just because FJ actually managed to fit it in based on a flippant comment of Kevin Riley's in "Naked Time."

Actually, I was enthralled with the overall layout, because I could actually see where everything was and visualize making my way through the corridors of the ship. And, of course, I could pick out which crew cabin I would have liked to occupy if I were living on that ship...