frog design has a funny and somewhat provocative essay on the Star Wars universe and its, well, terrible aesthetic choices. It focuses on greebles, needless details added to futuristic objects in order to make them seem bigger, more complex — think of the ornately rendered Borg cube from Star Trek TNG.

The original Star Destroyers were an exercise in selective greebling, extraneous parts protruding everywhere on the overall form to give the effect of scale and drama. The Millennium Falcon is essentially one large greebled serving plate. The desire for an imperfect form is a quest for more believability, based on the idea that, as humans, we respond and empathize more with imperfection than the perfect sculpted object.

The starship Enterprise is enormous, with, well, varying quantities of greebles over the years. It still manages to be somewhat simple among its peers in the world of science fiction.

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