A Poster-Sized Version of the McMaster Klingon D-7 Blueprints

This Klingon battlecruiser blueprint poster is intended as a same-scale companion for the Franz Joseph Enterprise poster also available for download on this site. It was created in Photoshop and employs elements of Franz Joseph’s artwork combined with the work of Michael McMaster.

Michael McMaster was twenty years old when the Franz Joseph blueprints for the “Fabulous Starship Enterprise” were released in the early 1970’s. Like many of us young fans at the time, he was both thrilled and inspired by Franz’s seminal work of blueprint art. Unlike most of us, however, Michael took his admiration and combined it with his artistic talent and skill. He took Franz’s concept to a new level, employing the basic design themes and particulars from the U.S.S. Enterprise blueprints to create entirely-new sets of blueprints for other Star Trek ships and equipment.

In 1975, just months after the commercial release of the officially-licensed Star Trek blueprints by Ballantine Books, McMaster released his own, unlicensed, fan-produced blueprints of the Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser, drawn lovingly in the style of Franz Joseph. They were an instant fan favorite, available through mail order via ads in the back of magazines and comics, and sold at the Star Trek conventions which were just beginning to create the entire concept of “fandom.”

McMaster would go on to create and market several other Star Trek blueprint sets, all in the style of Franz Joseph, including his masterpiece U.S.S. Enterprise Bridge Blueprints, a button-by-button, screen-by-screen reference guide to the iconic set where the bulk of the original Star Trek TV show was filmed. He would also produce ship blueprints for the Romulan Bird of Prey and a beautiful, multi-color ship size comparison chart poster, which remains my personal favorite for any Star Trek blueprint.

Tragically, McMaster lost his life at age 25 in the fall of 1978, just as he was working with other well-known names in the Star Trek fandom to produce the Star Trek Maps, a beautiful and seminal work of science-fiction art that was released by Ballantine. His obituary in Starlog magazine mentions several other exciting projects he was involved with which sadly never came to pass.

Michael McMaster’s legacy lives on in the blueprints he left behind, and this poster I’ve created from his artwork is my attempt to honor his skill. While I changed the format in order to place the artwork in a poster format, I paid tribute to the original by faithfully reproducing every callout and even transferring the original typed errata sheet onto the poster in Franz Joseph style, keeping McMaster’s typos and arithmetic errors such as “yoeman” instead of “yeoman,” and “secrity” instead of “security.”

Unlike the USS Constitution poster, I was unable to show the entire upper/lower views of the D7 profiles. The D7 as depicted in McMaster’s art is significantly wider than the Constitution Class ship, so in order to make it fit on the same size/same-scale poster I was forced to combine the top and bottom drawings into a split view.

Note that high-resolution scans of McMaster’s original blueprint sheets can be found at the Star Trek Blueprint database at Cygnus X-1.

The poster art is the same size and scale as my U.S.S. Constitution poster, and is designed as a companion piece. Click the link below the image to download the full-res versions. Please note that I created the art for my own personal use, and I’m sharing it freely for your personal use.