I must confess that my laser disc player must have hiccoughed when I went to the spacedock scene because that shot posted earlier didn't show itself. Most peculiar.

I went back and checked again, and I'm going to have to agree that the object is question is matted into the shot. It doesn't match the spacedock interior colors, as it does in the publicity photo.

I don't necessrily agree about the specific details being argued over, but in light of the evidence I'm going to weigh in on the side of it being a ship of some sort.

As to who at ILM might be able to identify the mystery object, it would have to be someone who worked on the scene, like Ren Ralstrom, Scott Farrar or Don Dow. This was before Okuda's time ( he started with Trek on ST4).

Also - the picture posted with the red circles - make it even more clear that it is not a part of the station - since it is not 'perpendicular' to the 'arm' of the station... it is at an angle - thus allowing that shadowy gap to appear.

For all we know, the thing COULD be attached to Spacedock, and it's actually an L-Shape. The connection could be behind the ship, where we can't see.

As for the nacelles, those are NOT Constitution nacelles. At least, they are not identical to Constitution nacelles:

1) Look at the Enterprise. Notice how there is a small circular grille, then a slanted section, then more grille? Notice how small the slanted section is? Now look at the "thing". Big friggin space between the two "grilles" there.

2) The "grilles" run to the very back of the nacelle. The grilles on a Constitution end much earlier.

3) The back of the nacelles on the Constitution are slanted inward, the opposite direction of the front of the nacelle. The slant on the back of the "thing's" nacelles is in the same direction as the front.

4) The bottom of the "thing's" nacelles are flat. The bottom of a Constitution's nacelle raises up a bit toward the back, plus there is a small fin at the very end.

Also notice the shadow in the publicity pic. You can clearly see the shadow of the "nacelle", but where is the shadow of the "saucer"? The saucer is obviously sitting higher then the nacelles, so why isn't it there?

Well, maybe the light source is coming from the bottom. OK, then why is there a giant shadow on the bottom? If the light source was from the top, then the nacelles wouldn't even appear at all! The shadows were mostly likely added by ILM (since comparing the ST3 screencap to this publicity shot, they obviously cleaned this thing up). They obviously screwed up in their altering of the image to add those shadows.

That Phase II excelsior try-out looks MASSIVE compared to the Ent.

Anyone else notice that The Excelsior is lit up by those spot lights - and then if you look under the arm that is partly obscuring the Phase II ship - it too has spot lights pointing up at it. There are also some more spot-lights behind the 'right arm' (the arm behind the Excelsior)... I'm guessing there might be another ship parked back there.